Quick question: Which US sports team has the most blue-collar fans?
Is it Philadelphia? Last week, Jimmy Rollins said the city was “not conducive for a superstar” because it is so blue collar. Or maybe it’s across the state. Actor Joe Manganiello, who did a documentary on Steelers fans in Los Angeles, said hard-working, blue-collar fans root for the Steelers — even if they’ve never been to Pittsburgh.
Green Bay? When the Packers and the Steelers played in Super Bowl XLV, The Huffington Post called it The Blue-Collar Bowl. “Super Bowls don’t get much more blue-collar than this,” CNN added. “A blue-collar city like Buffalo — the Bills are everything,” the official NFL Twitter account quoted.” Or is it Boston? “Blue-collar is what Boston’s all about,” a writer at Bleacher Report once wrote, lamenting the success of the Red Sox, Patriots and Celtics that led them to sign star players and make them (and, presumably, their fans) less blue-collar. Sky-blue collar, perhaps?
It could be the Mets. “The Mets tend to have more blue-collar sensibilities,” Metsblog’s Matt Cerrone told Politico. But according to a 2010 survey by Public Opinion Strategies, the Yankees actually have a higher percentage of blue-collar fans: 21 to 16%. Maybe don’t tell Mets fans: The same survey revealed they have more guns.
Braves fans have also been called blue-collar. Only those were the Milwaukee Braves, so maybe it doesn’t carry over. Fans of the Milwaukee Brewers are still blue-collar per Reuters. How could the answer not be the White Sox, the blue-collar answer to the white-collar Cubs. “We on the South Side are blue collar, down to earth people,” a fan wrote to the team’s official website. But a 2005 survey by Scarborough Research placed an equal percentage of “blue-collar fans” on both the White Sox and the Cubs. “St Louis is famous for attracting blue-collar fans from all over the Midwest who drive for hours to see a game,” USA Today reported. Sometimes entire sports have blue collar fans: hockey, auto racing, roller derby.
What about the Lakers, you say? Surely Hollywood isn’t blue collar. Not according to this blog titled, “Lakers Have the Most Blue-Collar Fans.” It’s never been updated and is probably part of some spammer’s trick, but someone had to write that sentence at some point.
And why stop in the US? In Australia, the AFL’s Port Adelaide are pretty sure their fans win the prize. “We’re working class, the blue-collar club of the League, and we’ll give it our best shot,” said their president, David Koch, in 2013. “We don’t have the bottomless finances of the AFL’s support of [Sydney’s] GWS, but we’ll certainly do our best under the circ*mstances.”
Clearly, the “blue collar” cliche has stuck. Athletes and coaches use it to describe themselves and their teams’ style of play. Last year, the New York Post wrote of fans who were “blue-collar types looking to entertain their clients for a night.” At some point it loses all meaning.
When athletes call themselves blue-collar, they’re labeling themselves as players who work hard. They go for every loose ball, take it one game at a time, give it 110% and other cliches. (Sports has a lot of cliches.) But what are blue-collar fans supposed to be? Rollins, in his interview with Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, suggested Phillies fans attitude meant the city was “not conducive for a superstar.”
“You can be good,” he said, “but you’ve got to be blue-collar along the way, keep your mouth shut, just go and work.” Blue-collar fans, Rollins says, like blue-collar players. He hasn’t yet started his first regular season with the Dodgers. But since there are people in every city who want their players to keep their mouth shut, who knows if Rollins will continue to feel “free” to be himself with the Dodgers, as he does now. (The Dodgers, according to the Stuff White People Like ripoff/homage site Stuff Chicanos Like, are beloved by blue-collar fans; the Brooklyn Dodgers had blue-collar fans, too, of course.)
The labeling of fans as blue-collar also lies with the same reasoning that allows most Americans to identify as middle class (or at least lower-middle class or upper-middle class). “Middle class has become a status, a brand – a label you opt to adopt,” the Atlantic wrote in 2013. The classic image of the American blue-collar worker is a person who works hard at his job, usually manufacturing. He puts in his time, doesn’t complain and is rewarded with a decent paycheck. This image becomes even more timeless and desirable as manufacturing jobs have left the United States. It feels like an authentic American profession.
Many fans believe in authenticity in sports, too. It’s why people hated the Vikings, Bengals, Eagles, Steelers, Cowboys Family commercial: You’re supposed to pick a team and stick with it your entire life, not change because you met Emmitt Smith at the airport! As fans get priced out of stadiums, they increasingly complain games are too expensive. There seem to be fewer blue-collar fans. Adam Reigner, a sports-talk host and producer in Philadelphia, lamented that Philly fans weren’t blue-collar anymore: “We’ve become just like every other city: we want the glitz and glamor; dare I say we idolize the ‘star.’” Many fans view sports as a heroic struggle where one team working hard can overcome all. They apply the blue-collar label to their favorite athletes and, eventually, to themselves. Eventually, it’s picked up as common knowledge — and blue-collar fans aren’t just in old Rust Belt cities that once had lots of manufacturing jobs, they’re everywhere.
So, uh, when blue-collar fans are in every city and they’re even taking their clients to games, maybe it’s time to retire the cliche.
