The Most Obnoxious Fan Bases In Sports

Remember how as a kid your coaches - mostly dads - drilled into your brain the importance of showing good sportsmanship during your Little League, Pop Warner football, or AYSO soccer days?

Remember when you were taught to treat your opposition with kindness at all times, shake their hands after the game, and never, ever taunt them or rub it in their face after victories?

Well, if you are a part of these sports fan bases, you're expected to completely forget all of that, put that sense of good sportsmanship aside forever, and be as arrogant and obnoxious as possible.

These are the fans who feel that they are entitled - who view followers of other teams as inferior life forms, letting them know as much in ways that are not subtle and oftentimes flat-out mean.

Drunkenness, name-calling, and violent fisticuffs are standard procedure with these folks; to attend sporting events involving the teams they support while wearing the cap, jersey or jacket of the opponent is to risk extreme verbal and sometimes physical abuse.

These three fan bases in particular are to be avoided at all costs; if you ever encounter them, I strongly encourage you to run the other way screaming...

Philadelphia Phillies / Eagles / 76ers / Flyers

When it comes to professional sports, the "City of Brotherly Love" is anything but.

How else do you describe a town whose fans have not only thrown bottles and battery-filled snowballs at opposing players, but have even booed Santa Claus? Where vile speech is considered normal and where even athletes playing for their own teams are booed and verbally brutalized at the ballpark / arena and on sports radio, as well as the Internet, whenever they don't produce?

Let me give an example of this:

Veterans Stadium, an absolute cookie cutter of a dump with horrible artificial turf that was the former home of baseball's Phillies and the NFL Eagles which was imploded a few years ago (thank goodness!), sported a makeshift courtroom and a holding cell in it's bowels, with a sitting judge presiding, because so many so-called "fans" got into drunken fights and heaved all sorts of things onto the field.

Lincoln Financial Field, the current home of the Eagles, has likewise built a cell and a courtroom for the same reason; if that doesn't say a lot about how Philadelphia fans are, I don't know what would.

I think it goes without saying that the thought of rooting for opponents in the land of Rocky Balboa, the Liberty Bell and hoagie cheesteaks, as well as the home of the Declaration of Independence, gives me shudders, as does this next group of so-called "fans", the...

Oakland Raiders

Besides the monstrous Halloween costumes that many of those silver and black-clad disciples wear on a regular basis, plus the usual inebriated obnoxiousness displayed by these fans from San Francisco's working class neighbors across the bay, I was told of two incidents which I think gives a clear picture of how bad these people are:

While attending a game against the Miami Dolphins at the Oakland Coliseum, the home of these Raiders, a few years ago, someone wearing a teal Dolphins jacket was waiting to use the bathroom when his jacket was suddenly ripped off his back and urinated on.

I was also told a story of how at another game a fan wearing a New York Jets cap, watching the Raiders and his Jets play and not bothering anyone, was accosted by a drunken thug in his seat who snarled, "Give me your cap right now!" while pulling a switch blade on him.

Imagine - getting a deadly weapon pulled on you because of a hat!

To say that's overboard would be an understatement of the highest measure, and should clearly illustrate what football fans in Northern California's blue-collar East Bay town are often like.

I saved this fan base for last because in my view - and a lot others across the country - these supporters are the worst in college sports, the...

USC Trojans

"We're very hard-core...arrogance is part of the image that we exude." - Jason Mangan, manager, USC Trojan Marching Band, 2000.

That statement perfectly sums up the philosophy of the most obnoxious group of fans in college sports.

The overwhelming bulk of this fan base is so evil in their interactions with opposing supporters, the only difference between USC Fans and Oakland's "Raider Nation" is that this "Trojan Family", particularly the alumni, tends to be more affluent and come from well-to-do backgrounds.

Please believe me when I say that you absolutely do not want to be an opposing fan at the Trojans' home, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, especially if the opponents are the UCLA Bruins, USC's crosstown rival.

Extreme drunkeness from students, fans and alums alike, vile gestures, nasty verbal abuse, and the throwing of all kinds of projectiles, including seat cushions - which were chucked onto the field at the 1989 Rose Bowl - are standard procedure among the followers of the cardinal and gold.

A culture of arrogance and snobbery pervades the University of Southern California campus and community, as t-shirts with slogans with slogans such as "My Maid Went To UCLA", "We're Not Snobs, We're Just Better Than You", and the real subtle "FUCLA", are commonly worn during Trojan sports events. Anyone not wearing the letters U, S, and C is seen and treated as a lower class inferior.

I know this is the case because I've personally encountered this satanic-like evil many times as a longtime resident of Los Angeles and an alumnus of UCLA, 'SC's enemy, so much so that I made a vow in the late 1990s to stop going to games involving that school, except for when UCLA is the home team during the annual football showdown.

And on top of all that, being that the Trojans play their pigskin at the edge of South Central L.A., a crime, drug, and gang-infested area, I and many of my Bruin compatriots avoid the Coliseum like the Black Death; it's not worth the aggravation.

That does not compare, however, to the story that this elderly lady, an eighty-something year old former UCLA cheerleader who's one of the sweetest individuals around, told me about how while at a Bruin-Trojan game a few years ago, some USC thugs spit on her.

I wasn't surprised at that, having encountered my share of Trojan evilness, but that should give you a clear illustration of what the vast majority of Trojan fans - many of them who have no ties to the school whatsoever - are like.

I reckon that most sports fans, especially baseball fanatics in New England, would list the New York Yankees' fan base as the worst. If I were a member of the Boston's "Red Sox Nation", those disciples of the pinstripes would definitely be on this list.

Having said that, this is my list of the folks who give sports a bad name, the fan bases that are (with a few exceptions) obnoxious, thuggish and downright scary, symbols of everything that's wrong with the world of athletics, whom you just want to say,

"Get a life! It's just a game!!"

It's unfortunate how idiots like these ruin things for everyone.