Who are the best crowds in sports?
Here in America, is it classy Masters' fans, vicious Philadelphia rooters, or St. Louis Cardinals traditionalists?
Who are the best crowds in sports?
Watching another dramatics Masters golf tournament on TV, the Augusta National crowd seemed once again like America’s best for knowledge of their sport, understanding of tradition, and fairness of discernment.
Masters tickets are underpriced and thus hard to get, and therefore they tend to be hoarded by Georgia gentry and national CEOs (as shown by the vast number of private jets that fly into Augusta in the first half of April). Phones are banned on the course, so the fans are absolutely into watching the moment with their own two eyes rather than recording it for social media.
https://x.com/Top100Rick/status/1912111940748353945
On the world stage, my impression is that the greatest golf fans of all, even better than Augusta’s, unsurprisingly, are British Open rooters at Scotland’s St. Andrews, the Royal & Ancient home of golf.
Golf is different from other sports in that you can’t really see the three dimensionality of the playing ground on TV. Hence, at St. Andrews, a grounds for golf have evolved over many centuries to be diabolically subtly contoured. It’s common for one player approaching from one side of the fairway and getting his approach to 20 feet to be greeted with a patter of polite applause, while the next player approaching from the other side of fairway and stopping his approach 40 feet from the hole is acclaimed with loud Huzzahs.
Watching on TV, where the third dimension is only vaguely registered, it’s hard to tell what the difference in difficulty really was. But you can trust the crowd at St. Andrews to validly distinguish excellence. Their great-great-grandfathers caddied many a big money round on this exact hole.
They know.
Then again, Spanish aficionados of the bullfights might be in a whole different league than even Scottish golf fans, combining sports fanship with artistic criticality.
On the other other hand, you may have a totally different view of what constitutes the “best fans.” You might feel that rabidly vicious Philadelphia team sport partisans comprise the best fans.
Or you might feel, as a compromise, that loyal but discriminating St. Louis Cardinal baseball fans are the best.
Let me know in the comments.
I went the full week to both 2022 St Andrews and 2019 Masters. Great fans. Hard to tell difference. St Andrews a little rowdier as there are bars right outside the gates. All in all very well behaved.
Best fans. - someone said Knicks fans at MSG and I can see that. Sat in front of two 9-year-old kids last year and they knew everything about the players, game etc. amazing knowledge. Goes for NY Rangers fans as well.
Buffalo Bills fans are great and loyal. Most fun fans are Cubs fans at Wrigley during day game. No place in the world better than Chicago on a day game day. I moved to that city just for that experience. The rest of the world is in their office cubicles at 11 AM on a Tuesday and you’re partying with hundreds of fun, attractive people. What’s not to like.
MMA fans are decent but too many tattoos. The tattooed have to be having some pangs of regret. How’s that barbed wire tattoo working out?
Philly Eagles fans are the worst. A gross town w gross people. lol. Philly got stuck with the ugly Italians as the handsome ones stayed in NYC area.
DC Wizards fans are some of the worst. Last game I went to I stood in line for beer at bar and line kept getting longer as the brothers kept cutting in front of me. I would’ve said something but I didn’t want to be stabbed in the heart.
I like the Mexican soccer fans who make US sissified liberal soccer fans cry for yelling a “racist” chant. They’re the best in my book.
The Washington Redskins once had the fanatical devotion of its fans as far back as the Sammy Baugh era through a bad patch after World War Two and then the short-lived Vince Lombardi era followed by the George Allen era and then the Joe Gibbs era. The waiting list for season tickets was as high as 100,000. But the Dan Snyder era destroyed that, a slow-motion catastrophe. Beyond Dan Snyder's self-destructiveness, the collapse of the devotion of Washington to its Redskins is also a result of Washington being more of a transitory city over the past forty years as the government greatly expanded as did the lobbying force. Most Washingtonians in 1970 were born and raised in the Washington area. That's not the case any longer. People come to Washington from all over the country and the world to get on the Washington gravy train. Sports bars all over the Washington area have Sundays dedicated to the teams of other cities- the Chicago Bears, the Dallas Cowboys, the Green Bay Packers, the Pittsburgh Steelers and many others except, perhaps, the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The most evil sports fans are those of Philadelphia. I don't know why. They even used to boo Mike Schmidt. But I do find it fitting that the Flyers haven't won a Stanley Cup for nearly fifty years after they bullied their way to two in a row in the mid-70s. It is so sweet.