Tasser: No loyalty in professional sports

People look for loyalty in many things: Friends, dogs, significant others — the list goes on… People look for loyalty in many things: Friends, dogs, significant others — the list goes on and on.

But in the realm of professional sports, loyalty is vastly overrated.

When future Hall of Fame first baseman Albert Pujols left the St. Louis Cardinals — the team that he has spent his entire 11-year career with — for a 10-year, $250 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Cardinals fans everywhere felt the same sting that Cleveland fans felt a year earlier when LeBron James bolted for South Beach with his friends.

This brought to light a trend that, to us as fans, is nothing less than supremely disappointing. We can’t understand why professional athletes would ever want to leave a city that worships them. But really, it’s not that difficult to comprehend.

When someone begins to get paid for doing something they love, the internal motivation to continue pursuing that hobby for the pure enjoyment of it goes down. It turns from something they enjoy to a job, which, according to PsychologyToday.com, is known as the overjustification effect. Sports at the professional level are a business first and a game second. The players’ intrinsic motivation is decreased with this knowledge. They get the money when and where they can.

For the fans, professional sports are exactly the opposite. When fans pay to attend games and buy jerseys, giving up money literally increases their investment in their teams. To justify how much money they spend, they need to love their team that much more. Kind of like buyer’s remorse.

Getting paid to play and paying to watch a team create opposite psychological effects — one makes people care less, the other makes them care more. This means fans are more loyal to their teams than players are, right?  Wrong.

Fans, after all, stick with their teams year after year, through thick and thin, wins and losses. Well, except losses. Ever notice that when a team wins, the fans cheer in the first person — “We won.” Yet when they lose, a third-person response — “They lost” — is elicited.

When the home team wins, the fans feel as though they have won and use the first person — even though it was the “disloyal” players who actually attained victory. PsychologyToday.com says this is known as “basking in reflective glory.”

When the team loses, the “loyal” fans distance themselves with the third person, because, deep down, people feel threatened by being a part of a failing group. This is known as “cutting off reflected failure.”

Fans will begin to offer less support to a team that loses frequently so as to disassociate themselves from failure. Take the Pirates for example: After 19 consecutive losing seasons, the few fans the team has left have moved on to other allegiances — teams that they can support when the Pirates inevitably disappoint again.

Furthermore, fans only see things from their point of view. They don’t — or won’t — see things from the perspective of other fans or players. They can’t imagine why their teams aren’t ranked higher in this week’s “Power Rankings,” nor can they reason why a player would want to leave their city.

“Why would Pujols leave?” I’ve heard people ask. “He just won a World Series title and has spent his whole career in St. Louis.”

To the fans, it seems like all players should give up money to stay where they are loved.

To the players, it seems the fans should be happy with the number of good years they were provided with.

Instead, the players are vilified for their “treason” by the fans, who are blind to their own treason every time their team loses.

So where is the loyalty in professional sports? With only a very few exceptions, it’s entirely absent.