Fans rooting for losses over wins betray their teams

There has long been a tacit social contract between sports teams and their respective fan bases: fans provide enthusiasm, loyalty and patronage, and in exchange, the players reward their fans with inspired, entertaining and, hopefully, successful play on the field. In times of triumph, this arrangement is simple. The fans get to cheer the big play and the players get to thank the fans; everyone gets what they want. When the team struggles, most fans find it depressing and demeaning to root ceaselessly for a failing team, but their absence makes it evermore difficult for the players on the field to elevate their game. Despite the challenges, historically, most fans remain loyal in the hope that if they cheer loud enough and the team tries hard enough, eventually some luck will come their way.

Call it the cynicism of our time, but things have changed. Whereas victory on game day used to be the solitary directive of team and fan alike, a once infrangible bond has given way to entreaties of "If you can't win on the field, at least you could try to help your position in the upcoming draft." All of this has come to a head this football season, where multiple teams are facing immense pressure to "Suck for Luck." Luck, in this case, is Andrew Luck, the quarterback from Stanford University, considered by most prognosticators to be the best collegiate prospect in recent history.

The idea behind "Suck for Luck" is that, by securing the worst record, a team can guarantee that it will be selecting Andrew Luck in the upcoming NFL draft. (The draft order is determined by the reverse order of the previous season's standings.) The primary teams in contention are the St. Louis Rams, Indianapolis Colts and Miami Dolphins. In the first two of these cases, though, the team's futility is forgivable: the Rams are a young, developing team with few weapons at present and the Colts are playing without future Hall-of-Famer and franchise cornerstone Peyton Manning, underscoring just how much he has meant to the team. With these teams, one gets the sense that the prospect of a favorable draft pick is but a moral victory for fans to salvage from a disappointing season. The same cannot be said for the fans and management of the Miami Dolphins, who seem to be taking a rooting interest in their team's failure, actively playing a role in their team's implosion.

Over the past couple of seasons, the Miami Dolphins have quickly built and torn asunder a competent football team. After going 1-15 in the 2007-2008 season, the team surpassed all expectations the following season by going 11-5 and winning the AFC East under first-year Head Coach Tony Sparano. Now though, Dolphins fans and management have made fielding a competitive team nearly impossible, making it no great secret that Luck was their target. In the offseason, Dolphins ownership openly courted other coaches, including Luck's head coach at Stanford, Jim Harbaugh, to replace Sparano, only extending a vote of confidence in Sparano once those overtures failed. Further, there has been a concentrated effort to mobilize popular support against quarterback Chad Henne, whose injury concerns and on-the-field struggles were magnified to the point that he lost all credibility with his team, creating a fractious locker room environment in the process. And now, in the middle of a season in which players are trying to find positives, keep their jobs and even just win a game or two, Dolphins players are brazenly asked at nearly every turn if they are excited about what it will be like to play with Luck next year. Unsurprisingly, most players find this more than a little offensive. Not that it matters, though. Fans and management have already traded in the team they have for the one they want next season. It's a matter of pride, almost. "Sure, stomp on us this year. Just you wait until we get Luck."

One of the easiest things for a team's management to promise and for a team's fan base to demand is a rebuilding process. Tear the whole thing down and start over! This is not a failsafe policy, and for every successful rebuilding initiative there are dozens of cautionary tales of teams sinking further into disrepair. Nevertheless, this strategy is generally appealing because it accomplishes several palliative effects that make a disappointing team seem digestible. First of all, it buys management time to find an answer to the team's woes, for a rebuilding process is always a multi-year endeavor, through which, as management always guarantees, there will be hard times. It energizes the fan base, for the prospect of future success provides meaning to its team's suffering. It also exonerates management from any culpability should the team encounter struggle, recasting any failure as deliberate growing pains that are all part of the plan. To this end, rebuilding processes can distort and confuse fan psychology, making it seem as though losing is necessary and therefore desirable. However, there is a very real difference between weathering the storm and praying for rain.

"Suck for Luck" is not a new phenomenon—this is just the loudest and most obvious it has ever been in the history of the NFL. The threat of teams tanking in order to optimize the value of their draft picks has been around in some measure for as long as the draft system has been in place. This theoretically acts in the interest of parity, for it makes it easier for bad teams to improve and makes it difficult for elite teams to maintain their relative hegemonies on talent. However, embedded in this system of talent allocation is an unavoidable moral hazard, which in turn imperils the integrity of athletic competition: There is a very real and enticing incentive for struggling teams to forfeit their seasons in order to "win" the draft. This is not to say that this system is not good, equitable and necessary, but rather to say that it is vulnerable to manipulation.

For a fan of a wayward franchise, this raises an important ethical question: Is it ever right to root against your team, even if it might be in the team's better interest to lose? Furthermore, if losing presents an opportunity that can benefit the team, is it even rooting against the team in the first place?

Make no mistake, "Suck for Luck" represents an abrogation of all that it means to root for a professional sports franchise. Of course, the counter-argument is that, in hoping for short-term losses, the fan base is actually wisely hoping for the long-term vitality of the team, which surely cannot be an unethical aspiration. This, however, is not pragmatism, but condescension. Is there any greater insult an avowed fan base can confer upon the players on the field than to root for their failure so that the team might find better players? Maybe we only cheer for laundry, and perhaps the players themselves are arbitrary, but isn't such a demonstrative attestation to that effect just impolite and disloyal? Hey, it might be the case that it is really in the best interest of a team to "Suck for Luck" and that whatever team ends up drafting him will be rewarded with years of unimpeded success. Even that will never justify a fan base celebrating the failings of its team and calling that support. Certainly a fan base that has to endure a thoroughly depressing season is within its rights to take solace in the knowledge that some good things are coming its way, but to be a party to the immolation of your own sports franchise means overstepping a line that a fan can never cross. I sure hope it's worth it.