Superfans

by George Dohrmann

  Across from AT&T Stadium in Arlington is a bar called Tailgate Tavern, and before the national championship game, as Black drank and socialized there, fans came up to him and took pictures with the tattoo. “You’re the man!” they said. “You’re our savior.” If Black could have frozen time, could have picked one moment to live over and over, that might be it. Sitting at that bar, free ticket to the NCAA title game in his pocket, the adulation of his fellow Kentucky fans washing over him, the belief floating in the air that he had helped his Wildcats win. That was about as good as it gets.

  Then Kentucky lost to Connecticut.

  Black wasn’t the prophet anymore, the savior; he was once again the fool, the Kentucky fan with a tattoo declaring the team a champion in a year it finished as runner-up. After the game, Black and Nathan went back to their hotel room and crashed. The next morning, they made the long and depressing thirteen-hour drive back to Richmond.

  People often say that they have “no regrets” when it is obvious they do. What else are they going to say when a plan ends miserably, when their choice led to failure or infamy or worse? But when Black says that he doesn’t regret getting the tattoo, it is hard not to believe him. The tattoo remains unchanged from the day he got it. It would have been easy to turn the “2014” on his calf to 2012, a year the Wildcats actually did win the national title. Or, looking ahead, if Kentucky were to win a title in, say, 2018, it would require only a few strokes of a tattoo artist’s pen to make the tattoo accurate.

  Would Black do that?

  “Hell no,” he says, with some annoyance that the thought crossed my mind. He has two full tattoo sleeves on his arms and other tattoos elsewhere, but “2014 NATI9NAL CHAMPIONS UK” is his favorite. “This is the tattoo that got me to Texas, got me all this attention, ya know? Even though they lost, they went on a historical run, and people will remember it for years to come. Any time I look at that, I can remember that run we made.”

  But from a fan-scholar point of view, there is more to it than that.

  Typically, the relationship between a sports fan and his or her favorite team flows in one direction. Fans offer support and affection, they are devoted, and the players give exactly what in return? Fans do benefit from this one-sided relationship—as we’ve seen, sports fandom can boost self-esteem and improve social-psychological health, in part because it builds social connections—but only the fan half of the equation is truly invested. If Tyler Austin Black stopped supporting the Wildcats, if one day he announced on Twitter he was forsaking the team, the Kentucky basketball players and coaches not only would never feel that loss, they would be unlikely to know it even happened.

  Since Black began supporting the Wildcats during that stagnant year in Berea, he has been in an intense relationship, but separated from what he loves by a figurative pane of glass. He could watch “his” Wildcats on TV or many, many rows up in an arena, but he couldn’t get any closer. He couldn’t talk with the players or call them on the phone or exchange emails with them.

  Until the tattoo. Black’s crazy tattoo provided him brief access behind the barrier. The players acknowledged his existence, the intensity of his affection, his fandom.

  And Black badly wanted that. He had tweeted at players before, hoping they’d respond, that some sort of two-way relationship would develop. But he never got a response until he got that tattoo. Social media is the current conduit for fans; they try and try to get some sort of response from athletes on Twitter and Facebook and other platforms. But their motivations are no different from those fans standing near the players’ entrance to the stadium or arena and shouting at athletes as they pass, something people have been doing forever. Those fans are hoping a player stops and gives them an autograph or even just throws them a wave, any kind of acknowledgment of their existence, of their devotion.

  No wonder Black still loves his tattoo, despite its incorrectness. It is a reminder of his fifteen minutes of Kentucky-hoops fame and the free trip he got to Texas and, most essential, the moment when he broke through, when he felt like a real part of his favorite team.

  Now the other tattoo and another Kentucky basketball fan.

  Michael Gray was, unlike Tyler Austin Black, indoctrinated into Wildcats basketball. Growing up in Keavy, an unincorporated community on the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest in the southern part of the state, he watched games with his mother. If Kentucky was losing, she would run and get a necklace with a charm of the Wildcats logo. She would rub it and rub it for luck, and today there is no color left. The Kentucky blue is completely worn off.

  After graduating from South Laurel High in 2003, Gray was also unsure what to do. He joined a metal band, Leave It at the Door, and they traveled around in a green van playing gigs in the Midwest. Later, he and another band, I, Sleepwalker, for which he played keyboards, toured the country, making just enough money to fill the gas tank. I, Sleepwalker put out a CD in 2007, the same year it broke up. “Everyone just kind of realized it was time to move on with their lives,” Gray says.

  For Gray, that meant college, and he enrolled at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, the same town Black would move to. He attended some of that school’s basketball games, but not religiously, and followed the Wildcats, too, but also not intensely. “I just had other interests,” he says with a hint of worry about how that sounds. Gray is smart but at times seems to be masking his intelligence, as if worried it might make you uncomfortable. After graduating with a degree in political science, he “had no clue what to do.” He worked briefly as a contractor for the US Immigration Services, doing online and over-the-phone customer service for people attempting to get green cards and visas. He hated it.

  Gray resembles a guy who still might play in a metal band: six-foot-three, lots of tattoos, and a bushy beard. He complements that look with Elvis Costello glasses and thick scarves. What he doesn’t look like is a lawyer. But in 2012, he enrolled at the law school at Northern Kentucky University. That school is just south of Cincinnati, but Gray moved to Lexington, making the 164-mile round-trip commute several days a week. “My fiancée was still at Eastern Kentucky,” he explains, “and Lexington was as close to halfway between the two places you can be without living in the woods.”

  When Kentucky won the 2012 national title, Gray got swept up in the excitement, but moving to Lexington that fall didn’t significantly ramp up his fandom. He was too busy: “Law school, especially in my first year, didn’t really afford it.”

  After Kentucky lost the 2014 national championship game to Connecticut, the game Black attended in Texas, much of the discussion in the Bluegrass State focused on the future of Willie Cauley-Stein, the Wildcats center who had retweeted the picture of Black’s tattoo. Would he leave school early for the NBA or spend another year at Kentucky? He was projected to be a first-round pick, and most players leave in that scenario. Gray knew that. The tweet he sent out on the morning of April 14 could be described as a joke, a bet you make only because you know you are unlikely to lose it.

  Rogue Cop @kvltclassic 14 Apr 2014 Kentucky, USA

  @KySportsRadio if @TrillGeta15 comes back ill tattoo his face on me before the season starts

  It was tweeted at Cauley-Stein, who responded that he wanted that promise in writing, to which Gray answered: “Word is bond.”

  “I sent it and responded to Willie but didn’t really think much about it because I had to get to class,” Gray says. It was on the drive home to Lexington that evening when he learned that Cauley-Stein had announced (on Twitter) that he was returning to Kentucky.

  If Gray had backed out of his bet, what is the worst that would have happened? “Probably a lot of people on Twitter saying stuff about me,” he says. “And they were already doing that.” When he sent out that first tweet, he received some of the same insults that Black had (inbred, lives in a trailer, et cetera). “I’m a UK fan, but they portrayed me as a crazy person that lives and dies by it,” he says. “I just thought it was funny because here I am in l
aw school and I don’t even have that much time to follow the team.”

  The consequences were small if Gray reneged on his promise, but he tweeted: “Man of my word. Looks like I need to be setting up an appointment.” He called a friend who was a tattoo artist, and a couple of weeks later he was at Quality Custom Tattoos. Gray had made no promises about how big the tattoo of Cauley-Stein’s face would be; he could have made it the size of a quarter. That is not Gray’s style, however. The tattoo he helped design and had needled onto his right calf is about the width and length of a loaf of bread. It has an overlapping “UK” in blue at the top and a likeness of Cauley-Stein’s face in the middle, framed by two arching green branches on the sides and a Kentucky blue flower at the bottom.

  Willie Cauley-Stein, inked forever on the calf of Michael Gray.

  “Done” he tweeted, along with a picture of the tattoo, and he tagged Cauley-Stein in the tweet. Gray was mostly praised (and written about extensively) for keeping his promise, though not everyone was happy. A few Kentucky diehards were upset that the image of Cauley-Stein on his calf didn’t include the headband the player wore during games. “You can’t make everyone happy,” Gray says.

  It is tempting to link Gray’s tattoo adventure to Black’s, to draw some of the same conclusions. But Gray didn’t make his bet because he wanted to form a connection with Cauley-Stein. He didn’t think, even in the smallest way, that his offer to get a Cauley-Stein tattoo would sway the Wildcats center to stay in school and thus help the program. It was a throwaway tweet—or so he thought.

  That said, he did get a Kentucky player’s face tattooed on his leg. Doesn’t that tell us something about him, about his fandom?

  To that question, Gray rolls back the sleeve covering his left arm. There he has several tattoos related to the TV show Lost. There is the face of the character Richard Alpert, as large as or a little bigger than Cauley-Stein’s image. The face and upper body of Daniel Faraday, another character, is tattooed there as well, along with a polar bear and a statue and other symbols from the show.

  Sure, Gray is a fan of the Kentucky Wildcats. Even after relocating to Orem, Utah, in 2015 to work as a compliance coordinator at Utah Valley University, he still follows the team. But to ruminate on his fandom is a waste of time. Sometimes, a tattoo can tell us a lot about a person, about their fandom. Other times, it is just a tattoo.

  To put a fine point on that, Gray gestures to his left calf. There, to the left of the Cauley-Stein tattoo, is a tattoo of the Wu-Tang Clan with some honeycomb and bees. He got it about a year after the Cauley-Stein tattoo, and his motivation was, well, he likes the Wu-Tang Clan, and why not?

  “I’m just not somebody who thinks getting a tattoo is that big a deal.”

  Damn, Terrell Owens is hot.

  That is the gist of the conversation that Angela Davis and Marcelle English were having on a Sunday in 2008 at the Fox Sports Grill on the edge of midtown Atlanta. The two women, both in their thirties, were watching NFL pregame shows, sipping martinis, and a report about the then–Dallas Cowboys wide receiver was airing on one of the restaurant’s many televisions.

  Owens’s hotness was undeniable. He had the body of Adonis, and he has never been shy about showing it. He once held a press conference in his driveway, shirtless, while doing curls and crunches. David and English knew all about Owens, who in 2008, his thirteenth year in the NFL, was still one of the game’s best wide receivers. But they didn’t talk about the 1,000-plus yards receiving he would put up that season or his 10 touchdown catches. They weren’t comparing him to other receivers or debating whether he would one day earn a place in the NFL Hall of Fame. No, Davis and English were focused on a different topic: Was Terrell Owens the hottest player in the NFL?

  To be clear, Davis and English know sports. They play fantasy football, and their teams are often very good; they frequently debate the merits of their favorite teams signing free agents; they analyze draft classes and trades like most diehard fans. But at that moment in 2008, they were forgoing conventional sports talk for a playful discussion about a player’s beauty. It was in the midst of this debate that Davis looked around the bar and noted that there were a number of other tables occupied by women. She wondered what they were talking about. Were they also pondering Owens’s hotness? It occurred to her that whatever they were discussing, it likely wasn’t “what the pregame shows or the announcers during the NFL games were talking about. None of that was geared toward women.” She turned to English and said, half-jokingly, “We should start a company for women like us, women who like sports.” A few weeks later, the two gathered at English’s house to watch the NBA All-Star game. (If anyone doubted how big of a sports fan they are, making an event out of the meaningless NBA All-Star game puts that to rest.) Sitting at English’s dining table, the game on in the background as they ate salmon and baked potatoes and salad, the idea for a company that spoke to female sports fans came up again. They got out some paper and “wrote out the business [plan] right there,” Davis says.

  The name of the company is Jersey Girl Sports. It is not, as it might seem, a reference to the Garden State. Neither Davis nor English are from New Jersey. They have spent most of their lives in the South. The name of the company was taken from English’s fantasy football team, which was called “Pink Jersey Girl.” They liked the generality of the name, “because every sport has some kind of jersey.”

  The motto of the company is “Where Women and Sports Meet on Our Terms.” It consists of a website and a studio show. The website features a “Lifestyle” tab, which leads to a page of stories such as “Give Your Game the Boot! Best Boots for Your Next Sporting Event” and “Three Healthy Ways to Enjoy Tasty Wings on Game Day.” The “Hot Topics” section recently included a story about a waitress who claims she is having NFL running back Reggie Bush’s baby and another about Dwyane Wade winning a bet with LeBron James over the 2016 World Series. The studio show, called The Sports Bra, is billed as a “Weekly dose of sports news, entertainment, and lifestyle with a feminine twist.” It is a quick (about six minutes) update on the sports world, highlighting big upcoming events (like the opening of the NBA season or the Super Bowl) and news that Davis and English think will interest women. The website’s most popular feature is “Hottie of the Week.” It is a beefcake shot of a professional athlete with captions like “Ladies, Tyson Chandler comes to remind you that the NBA season is here! A little sexy goes a long way!”

  Jersey Girls Angela Davis (center) and Marcelle English with NFL coaching legend Dick Vermeil (left) and the late Steve Sabol of NFL Films.

  Davis and English also host informational sessions for women at sports bars. The football course is called “First and Flirty”; for the NBA it is “Hoops and Handbags”; for NASCAR it is “Cars and Curves.” The lessons “connect the game to something that women live and do every day,” Davis says. For example, in explaining the difference between a restricted and unrestricted free agent in football, “we say it is like being single versus dating. Unrestricted, you’re available. Restricted, you might be with someone, but hey, if a better offer comes in, you might leave.” They also find creative ways to incorporate sports terminology into everyday life. Dating your best friend’s ex? “Flag on the play!” Ready to go out and at the last minute you change from a dress to jeans? “You just called an audible!” Adds Davis: “We always say to them, ‘Ladies, you live this game, and you don’t even realize it.’ ”

  Both Davis and English went to college believing they’d be journalists (Davis at Grambling State, English at Georgia State), but English ended up in public relations and Davis got into IT. They met when English was working at a radio station and Davis showed up to be a panelist on a show about dating and relationships. English is shorter and more direct, and comes across as more business savvy. Davis is taller and smoother and more of a natural on camera. They are a good pairing.

  Both women are smart and aware that their view of women and fandom might rankle some people.
Not all female sports fans need or want a “lifestyle element” attached to the team or sport they follow. Further, there are many, many women who know as much or more than men about sports, who follow their favorite team daily, who know all the stats, who know the game so well they can predict a play before it happens. There is no shortage of women who would blow the top off of Dan Wann’s SSIS, diehard fanatics with a deep passion for their team. And many don’t give a crap about how hot Terrell Owens is or who is getting married or what boots are best worn to an NBA game.

  The first female NFL and NBA assistant coaches were hired in the past few years, and there are women referees now in both those leagues; meanwhile, women journalists and fans are being acknowledged more than ever for their understanding of the sports they follow. The viewpoint of female fans that Davis and English espouse can feel like a step back, an embrace of a 1950s housewife version of a female sports fan.

  Davis and English admit they are making some generalizations about women, but they also defend those generalizations. They see a great divide between the two sexes when it comes to what they want and get out of being a sports fan. They know women who are diehards, who couldn’t care less about Terrell Owens’s hotness, and concede that female fans are not a monolith. But generally they see women as a different kind of fan. “It is really understanding how women connect,” Davis explains. “What really drives me is the human-interest stuff surrounding the game, the lifestyle of the game….For a lot of female fans, we found that this is stuff they connect to.” While sitting at Hudson Grille in Atlanta, a slate of NCAA Tournament games playing in the background, English gives an example: The previous weekend, Notre Dame men’s basketball coach Mike Brey had coached his team to a victory less than twenty-four hours after his mother’s death. “That is the stuff women are talking about. While they’re involved in their [NCAA Tournament] bracket, they may not even have paid any attention to Notre Dame. But now their entire focus has shifted. So now it’s like, I want to see what [Brey] is going to do.”