Lindsey–great point about irrelevant teams in big markets. It was a statewide thing for us in WI with the Packers throughout the 2000s. And to Derek’s point a bit, the relevant/irrelevant framework doesn’t work quite as well for college athletics, if only because of the sheer number of teams and subsequently greater focus on localism than in pro sports (more on that in a sec).

Miles and Mabel–both strong points. I want to stress the “isolated incidents of irrelevance” part of my post not only for its insufferable alliteration, but because I really don’t know how to Theorize Grandly like Simmons. That is, the narratives change on a series by series basis, especially, as Mabel points out, depending on the opponent. But as Myles also says, there’s a certain hegemonic pull towards entrenched narratives. So, like any good cultural studies position, the conclusion is that it’s both.

Christine–yes and yes. If I’d had more room to write here and/or a pitcher to share with you all in person, this is what I’d dig at more–how at the personal level we constantly adapt to the narratives offered to us by our teams and the coverage of them. This is my beef with Simmons–no one owns passion, it’s not a quantifiable thing just because team X has 14 more years of “suffering” than team Y. Suffering is a qualitative thing. We all suffer in our own ways and to varying degrees. Of course, having the privilege of watching Alfonso Soriano skip in the outfield probably entitles you to more suffering than most, Christine (hey-o!).

Derek–I agree about the game-changing nature of nationalized coverage and how locality is played out nationally in the present day (what about ESPN.com’s turn to local markets–ESPN Dallas, ESPN Boston, etc.?), but I’d argue that locality is articulated in very specific, structured ways. Indeed, the Yankees et. al. no longer hold the same cultural dominance, but the way we talked about those teams still very much applies. We still need villians, underdogs, etc., it’s just that this vocabulary is so ubiquitous, so shout-y (if Skip Bayless is involved) so that we can make sense of the explosion of localities.

I can offer some perspective on “tortured” MLS fanbases, as I’ve watched the New England Revolution lose four (count ’em) four MLS Cup championship matches, including three in a row. The Revs were soon after dubbed “the Buffalo Bills of MLS”–which I think was inaccurate for at least two reasons. The first is the peculiar status of the American soccer fan, and the second is the function of sports in crafting local identity in postindustrial rust belt cities.

First, despite the futility of the Revs in championship matches (or the pain of fans in San Jose, Miami and Tampa, whose MLS teams either folded or re-located), fans of MLS are generally boosters of American soccer first, fans of their teams second. There are many reasons for this – the original small footprint of the league,the small media presence, and the relatively short history of most teams. But beyond this, I think American soccer fandom is build on the shared experiences of trying to convince kids in the neighborhood to play pickup games in the summer, of searching through sporting goods catalogues and spanish-language channels for any hint of the game, and begging bartenders to switch one TV to a soccer match. American soccer fans thus feel more investment in the game itself, and for that reason prioritize the health and vitality of the sport in this country over individual club allegiances.

The second reason that the “Buffalo Bills of MLS” moniker is inaccurate is that the kind of “torture” that Buffalo or Cleveland sports fan has undergone–and the celebration that Pittsburgh’s sports teams have experienced–is intrinsically tied to the socioeconomic trauma those cities have undergone. Those cities have lost 50% of their population in the last 50 years, and had their industrial identity demolished within 8-10 years. For Pittsburghers, the Steelers 1970s successes were a reminder of the city’s former glory, and Steeler fandom was one way to maintain a connection to the city even as thousands were forced to relocate to cities across America (witness the worldwide phenomenon of “Steelers Bars”). For Buffalo and Cleveland, their sports failures only reflects their diminished economic and cultural influence–while cities like New York, Los Angeles and Dallas prospered (both economically and on the field), Cleveland and Buffalo could never overcome those ‘big markets.’ That, at least in part, is why their losses resonate beyond those of the Revs–even though the Revs lost 2 of those matches in extra time and one on penalties! And all that with the worst front office in the league. Gah!

I guess that my point is that the present superabundance of professional sports coverage, which is itself a function of the tremendous investment that fans make in the various entities associated with these leagues, now allows various narratives and characterizations to be played off of one another. Sitting here in Wisconsin, I can access the local coverage of my team and play that off of those who would deem it irrelevant. While I agree with Myles’ point that the same old sports narratives tend to proliferate in this new sportsmedia universe, I think that there is also room for increased pushback on the basis of local affiliation, interests resulting from fantasy sports, and other factors. While the days of cheap tickets to your average playoff game have passed, I don’t know that there’s ever been a better time to follow a team from afar. There are so many resources available now for fans and onlookers to use in the production of their own relationships with the objects of their interest, be they teams, players, coaches, or even executives.

Fast forward to 2010, where wall-to-wall multi-platform interactive sports coverage is the norm, giving virtually endless space for all sorts of positioning (and here Bourdieu’s work on fields of cultural production is pretty important). Every team in every league in every major sport (and many minor ones) is analyzed, broken down, prognosticated, and ranked by fans and analysts all over the continent and planet every day. In this environment, all possible narratives are articulated at some point, by somebody. Locality still matters intensely, but the difference now is that that locality is itself constantly played on national and international stages.

To chime in with my own sports perspective on this, I’m a University of Arizona Wildcat fan to the bone (painfully, these days, after AZ’s SB 1070), which involves many layers of positioning. Statewide, the rivalry with Arizona State (in everything) is primary, as it is with every other pairing in the Pac-10, and many elsewhere (e.g., Texas vs. Oklahoma). It involves tallying up head-to-head wins, conference wins, bowl games, etc. And that’s just football, and that’s just before you get to arcane individual stats. At the conference level, it involves an annual reminder that the UA is the only team in the conference never to win an outright conference championship and play in the Rose Bowl; painful variations are played out annually (e.g., the Cats were six seconds from defeating eventual champ Oregon last November. Sigh.). At the national level, it’s played out in BCS posturing, with SEC fans mocking the Pac-10 for being USC + 9 for most of the last decade, and Pac-10 fans firing back at the SEC schools’ regular scheduling of out-of-conference cupcakes.

While the arms race in college football still favors a dozen or so perennial powers, rendering all others (including my Wildcats) as only would-be contenders, parity is much more the case in most other major sports these days. Thus, there is more room for new narratives as teams rise and fall (e.g., with the Phillies, as Mabel points out). Any inkling of a rise or fall will be played up, pounced on, debated and so on, not only locally (where it would have been the only place that mattered, 40 years back) but nationally and even globally. We’re still stuck with the Yankees, Cowboys, and Dukes of the sports world, but I’d argue their cultural dominance is nowhere near as great as it once was.

So the debate over which is worse, which is more tortured has morphed into a debate more focused on narratives and media coverage (and umpire calls) of our beloved team. He’s exceedingly cynical and still thinks everyone is against the phils… I’m not so sure. The point is that in the last three years, to some degree the national media coverage of the Phillies has, in some ways, changed pretty drastically. Truth be told, in 2008 when we won the world series, the national media didn’t quite know what to do with us. They wanted a Red Sox-Dodgers series (this is right after Manny was traded from Boston to LA). They wanted two of the biggest baseball markets in the country. Instead, they got the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies. Philly of course is the 4th or 5th largest media market in the country but somehow we became a small market-little engine that could type club. So in 2008 I think you could easily position the Phils as one of the clubs you discuss above. In 2009 however, when we play the YANKEES (much like the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE) a lot of things changed. We became “America’s Team.” We were the noble underdog taking on the Evil Empire. The national media had a way to frame our narrative. (And interestingly we were largely legitimated as a club based on LOSING to the YANKEES… BEATING the rays to take the Series meant far lass.) Now, with Roy Halladay, Ryan Howard’s $125,000,000 contract and a team looking for its third WS appearance in a row… I think the discourse/narrative may be morphing again.

However, what’s perhaps even more interesting about this post is the emphasis it places on national media. One of the things I think is most interesting about sports is this national/local dynamic. (Like Lindsay’s point about sports in Dallas being overshadowed by football, Philly has become a baseball town in a new way where in the early 2000s it was far more E-A-G-L-E-S than anything else.) the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE and the NBA both have more national coverage in the regular season than does MLB or the NHL, which raises some interesting questions not only about how different sports operate differently but how network tv versus ESPN work to construct these narratives. This post encourages me to think not only about how the Phillies have been constructed in the national media– which is certainly important and revealing– but comparing that to not only local corporate media, but local bloggers/tweeters… which at least in Philly has become huge business. How do we understand grand narratives constructed by dozens of sources? How do they work together continuously and how do they compete? How many local narratives are there?

All of which is to say good stuff, go flyers and go phils!

The ongoing NHL Playoffs are an interesting example of this, from a broadcasting perspective. In Canada, national public broadcaster CBC and TSN share the rights, an odd lottery process which essentially boils down to “CBC gets to pick first, then TSN gets what’s left over.” So CBC was forced to decide between the two Canadian teams in the Eastern Conference (the Ottawa Senators and the Montreal Canadiens), while TSN got whatever they didn’t select. They chose the Ottawa Senators, because they were hitting a “star narrative” in the form of Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins, a series which Pittsburgh won pretty easily (albeit in 6 games).

However, while Montreal were expected to go down pretty easily to the NHL’s best team, they turned it into a 7-game thriller that gave TSN the best narrative of the opening round, hands down. However, the joy of sport is that no one could have seen it coming, the unpredictability meaning that even TSN had no idea what they were choosing when the broadcasting rights were organized.

But now they adapt: Montreal becomes the scrappy underdog trying to pull off another upset, this time against the star narrative of Sidney Crosby, which gives CBC (who now gets every Canadian team left by default) an even better narrative in the second round. Playoffs force networks to “adapt” on the fly, making it an intriguing test for the entrenched narratives omnipresent in such sporting events.