Boo-birds?

I’ve heard it and i think one of the most classless things that a fan can do is boo their own team. I heard it again yesterday. Our Tennessee Titans were playing. They’ve not been an overall winning team in a long time and at times they are just weak as a team. But they were getting beat at a team everyone thought we should not get beat by. And out came the “boo-birds.” Expectation turned to frustration and then to exasperation. i’ve never heard it, even among the fanbase of the worst teams and thought, “yep, that’s a smart move.” It just makes no sense to boo your own team. Let me give you five reasons why.

1. You’re a fan: You are supposed to be FOR them! While booing may communicate a number of things, NONE of them is support. In the “How To Be A Good Fan” media guide you will never see a fan cupping his hands and screaming “Go Team!!! Booooo!!!!” To quote the Gieco commercial: “That’s not how it’s done, that’s not how any of this is done!”

2. You couldn’t do better, but you are correcting them: Men 40 years past their prime (which wasn’t that good anyway) and 40 pound over playing weight scream their complaints to the guy who are actually DOING it, playing the game. You don’t hear guys in the surgery observation deck (do those exist?) ragging on the surgeon - “com’ on, you can cut better than that! You need to be faster than that!” 

3. Nobody ever got better by being booed: No player ever was interviewed after a win who said, ‘You know, we were playing and really stinking it up, and I heard a large group of our fans in Section R47 booing and I thought, ‘man, we need to get it together.’ I really want to thank them, We couldn’t have won without that boo’ing.” Booing doesn’t make anyone better. In fact, it’d make me worse. It’d make me want to get away, to believe I wasn’t wanted. 

4. The story is not over yet: In the game I referenced earlier the team played pretty pitiful early on and fell behind by three scores. But in the second half they rallied and ended up winning in a super comeback. It made the all those booing look pretty bad. 

5. You may not know everything you think you know. You don’t know if Michael Jordan has the flu or in the star player’s dad just died or if there is conflict they are working through on a team or if a coach has already been dismissed and they are working on the details. There’s often much and important info that you don’t know.

I know you think we’ve been talking about football, but the same can be applied to churches, to ministers, to elderships, even to individual Christians. Read through it again with that in mind. And stop booing the elders and preacher!