I am Not An Affiliate

Every year when January rolls around, I start to look at the TV hoping for the Super Bowl. Not because I care about the game. I rarely know who is playing until half-time. Then I forget it again 1.7 days later. I look forward to the end of football season with the same hopefulness Cubs fans look forward to the beginning of the next baseball season. "Next year," I think to myself. "Next year might be the year where I will not have to be reminded that the NFL exists." Realistically, this will never happen as long as Moose is alive. So I take the bad with the good.

The part that I find most fascinating, confusing, and most worthy of further Psychological study is the Fan Behavior. Did you know that many of these people feel they can influence a game? And I don't mean the ones that are at the game wearing jerseys and balancing strange craft-projects on their heads. On that one I can at least appreciate the theory of the collective cheering fueling the energy of the players on the field that can actually hear the roar. No, I mean the ones that change their facebook profile pictures each week to bring "luck" to "their" team. Or wear a team jersey out for chicken wings at the sports bar to watch the game.

It just completely escapes me. That affiliative illusion. Mostly, what is it in people that drives them to seek out a large group of people to agree with? To be part of? Because I don't have that.