Superfans

November 13, 2017
In this vastly entertaining and enlightening effort, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Dohrmann (Play Their Hearts Out) explores the peculiar behaviors of sports fans. Being a sports fan is about identity, he argues, and also about socializing, because arenas and bars serve as “neutral meeting grounds” for people who love the same team. In his fan profiles, Dohrmann focuses on deeply complex individuals. For example, he interviews a woman who is a Seattle Seahawks superfan who is also a domestic-abuse survivor. In the wake of controversy surrounding the team’s draft of a player accused of beating his girlfriend, she said, “This was the media overdramatizing it.” Dohrmann treats his subjects with dignity—whether it’s the sports psychologist who hexes opposing players shooting free throws or the Colts fan who uses his elaborate game-day getups as a form of artistic expression. By exploring the motivations of the men and women who display team tattoos and coordinate fan armies complete with military ranks, Dohrmann gives soul to a much maligned and misunderstood aspect of sports.

January 1, 2018

Dohrmann (Play Their Hearts Out) addresses why sports fans root, how they attach themselves to particular teams, and the variety of ways they display their intense adherence to their favorite sports. The author begins and ends with the Portland, OR, soccer fan that started a dedicated fan group known as the Timbers Army in the 1990s that continues to this day. Dohrmann describes him as the ideal fan: passionate but without losing a personal identity. We then learn of fans who dress up in odd costumes, online and in-person fan communities, the effects of extreme adult fandom on children, what causes a devoted fan to break away from this zeal, the connections between obsessive fandom and religion, and the healing power of community. We also meet a small group of academics who analyze fandom; several relevant studies are referenced in the text, including such concepts as BIRG (basking in reflected glory) and CORF (cutting off reflected failure). VERDICT An inside look at people who draw a sense of place and belonging from the sports teams for which they root. This book should have a broad readership.--John Maxymuk, Rutgers Univ. Lib., Camden, NJ

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2017
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turns his attention to those who identify obsessively with their teams.Dohrmann (Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine, 2010, etc.) doesn't pretend to offer the last word on superfandom. Instead, he spotlights a field of study that it still in its infancy. He shows why the sort of fan studied by psychologists deserves more attention, at least partly because "sports is the rare piece of popular culture that exposes people of different cultures, races, religions and classes to one another, that brings them together on a large scale." Though the author highlights some of the research and its conclusions, the liveliest parts are character studies of real people who devote their lives to their teams. Some seem to crave attention; others find an outlet for their artistic creativity; still others transfer their addictive tendencies to an obsession with sports. Many are displaced, and gathering with other fans far from where they first identified with the team reinforces their "place attachment." In such cases as the Green Bay Packers and the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the place is prized for forging certain character values that the fans see the team as embodying--even as the ties between the players and the place might be increasingly tenuous. This is also the rare field of academic research where "these academics behave like the people they study. They know how the sausage is made and yet they still have ordered a double helping." In other words, they are sports fans who seem to have a lot of fun studying other sports fans and who give presentations such as, "Your Team Stinks! The Impact of Team Identification on Biased Ratings of Odors." The book runs the gamut from the seriously disturbed sports fanatic to those who find transcendence in a community that might even be more important than the team.The organization is a little scattershot, but this is a fascinating subject deserving of further study, and Dohrmann provides a good jumping-off point.

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