By Justin Ulley
Sports Editor
Every type of sport has them, the people who all of a sudden start rooting for a team because it had just won the national championship, or cheer on a player who performs extremely well. They might follow one team, then a year later they’ll move on to the next “top” team. Yes, I’m referring to all the bandwagoners out there.
Linsanity is one of the more recent examples of people following the next big thing in sports, only for us to hear very little about Jeremy Lin a few weeks later. Granted, he is a good player, and he definitely proved himself to be a valuable asset of the New York Knicks. However, when Lin came out of nowhere this season, almost everyone was hooked on Linsanity. All you would hear about is Jeremy Lin and how amazing he is, and he suddenly became everyone’s favorite player. Then slowly his popularity began to die down, as Lin’s amazing stats decreased.
Another example would be this year’s Superbowl winners, the New York Giants. When the Giants made it to the playoffs, I started to notice more and more Giants fans poping up. When they won the NFC title, all I saw on Facebook were excited posts about how the Giants were going to the Superbowl. Finally when New York won, everyone was cheering them on. I wonder if next year those same people will be cheering on the Giants too.
I understand why people would want to be part of the next big sports thing, but when those people begin to act as though they’ve been with a team, or player, through thick and thin, or are constantly mentioning that they’re a fan of whatever team’s winning, it begins to get annoying. People should pick a team that holds some importance to them. Take the New York Giants for example. That might be someone’s team because he or she lived in New York and the first football game he or she went to was a Giants game. It just doesn’t seem right for a person in Los Angeles to say that his or her team is the Giants after it won the Superbowl, even though he or she can’t name a single player on the team and has absolutely no connection to New York.