Some guys are annoying in a very hyper-specific way. Basic annoying sports fan guys are a dime a dozen. The fairweather fan, the drunk asshole fan, the guy who yells about his fantasy team or his bets. You could go into any sports bar right now and find those guys. The Lakers/Cowboys/Yankees fan? We’ve all met him.

What interests me is the more specific guy. The guy who has one strong opinion about something that doesn’t deserve such a strong opinion, or the one pointlessly irksome habit. A few months ago I asked this question on twitter and got far more responses than I anticipated. Unfortunately, a lot of people seemed to misinterpret my admittedly vague description and give me the routine annoying sports guys, but I also got a lot of great answers, more than I could fit here. I’m thinking of very specific traits, not the guy you can find in every sports bar. The guy you find in random places online, ranting about shit that doesn’t matter. Case in point, guys like:

“STOP SAYING WE” GUY
Stop saying we guy is either a troll or, worse, what we used to call a grammar nazi. I don’t think anyone really uses that term anymore but back in my online days grammar nazi was a definite insult for a super annoying person who would correct your grammar online or in-person. The problem with the grammar nazi, in this case the guy who gets upset if you say “we” when referring to your team, is that grammar is honestly not that important in very casual conversation. Grammar is important for official, professional documents when clarity of language and intent is paramount. It is not very important for two guys at the bar who are discussing their team to not simply use basic pronouns to make the conversation flow easier. These dorks love to argue I am talking as if I am part of the Giants if I refer to the Giants in conversation like “we need a quarterback who doesn’t suck harder than a black hole”. I am not. Here’s the thing. They absolutely know I am not part of the team and that I am not inferring that I am, they are just being pedantic, annoying shits. Fuck off!

HATES THE WAVE GUY
This is one that confuses me because the wave is such a simple, harmless thing. You just stand up and hold your hands overhead for a quick second and you watch the fluid-like motion flow around a stadium. You don’t have to participate! You can ignore it! The wave will pass by in mere seconds and any view that gets obstructed is back almost instantly. I most often experience a wave at baseball games, which is a sport with a ton of downtime already so 1 second of wave that I can stay seated for is just…who cares? Well, this guy does. This guy fucking hates the wave. He will yell sit down at wavers. He will go online and rant about how stupid the wave is. I think I’ve been more annoyed by wave haters than I’ve ever been by the actual wave. Granted, I will finish off this section by admitting that there is that one guy who is always trying to start the wave, and that guy is annoying, and is also in the zoo right next to the wave hater.

THINKS A JERSEY IS COSPLAY OR UNMANLY GUY
This is kind of two guys in one, but they tend to overlap a bit. This guy is disgusted by the idea of wearing another man’s name on you. This honestly just shows how insecure the guy is more than anything else. Jerseys are obviously not day-to-day shirts unless you are part of a fashionable subculture of some sort. I don’t wear my jerseys to get groceries, at least not on days when my team isn’t playing. I only wear the jerseys to events, for games. Because it’s specialty team swag! While the manosphere type guy who thinks it’s beta cuck shit to wear another man’s name as a shirt is just a sad, insecure man, the “cosplay” comment always amused me. When I wear an Eli jersey I am not pretending to be Eli Manning, or even dress up as Eli Manning. I’m just wearing a fancy-material shirt. All it actually says is “I am a fan of Eli Manning”. If I was cosplaying I’d be putting on a helmet, maybe some pads under the shirt, putting on the pants, wearing cleats. You know, putting together an actual costume? I’m just wearing a shirt! It’s like wearing a band tee that looks weird to wear to the store on a Tuesday morning. There is one more variation on this guy I saw in my comments not long ago: the guy with the rule of not wearing a jersey of a guy younger than you. You can abide by that rule if you want, but holding everyone to that rule is silly. If you like a player and want to wear the jersey in support, just do it.

GET IN THE HOLE GUY
When I was a kid and my dad turned on golf I thought this guy was the funniest guy in history. The charm wears off very quickly, however. It was meme before memes, something that some dork started and took off at golfing events by every frat bro chucklefuck who could afford to get in the country club. It’s almost inexcusable to still be hearing this during golf broadcasts in 2024.

SPORTSBALL HANDEGG GUY
Not necessarily a sports guy, usually a sports hater, but it is a comment on sports so I’m using it. It’s not really any different than the last guy. At some point, someone came up with Sportsball and Handegg and every nerd who hates sports in existence latched onto a brand new fun way to mock sports likers. Like most of these cute nickname terms it was kinda funny at first but in 2024 is just tired. We get it, you aren’t into sports, find a new way to be clever about it. I don’t know if I’m the minority on this one, but I’m also sick of hearing “Superb Owl”. That one ran its course a while ago too and I haven’t seen it get any fresh life in ages.

GOES INTO OPPOSING TEAM SPACES AFTER A LOSS TO SAY GOOD GAME GUY
If you use Reddit you know exactly what I’m talking about here. Your team loses a tough game, you go online to bitch about it with other fans and commiserate and you see a post like “____ FAN, I COME IN PEACE” and it’s just a post like “wow thought you guys really had us there, we were lucky to get the win, refs were on our side haha if you get a pass rusher next year you’ll be spooky”. It is a post made from a good place (usually) by a fan who just wants to be friendly and talk ball but it is THE LAST thing you want to read at that moment and it is condescending as hell. I get the motivation to try an extend a friendly olive branch, you have it in real life too if you’ve ever been at a bar watching the game with fans of the opposing team. It’s polite. It’s also extremely irritating at that moment especially if you have not had a conversation with this person before this moment, which is the case online for all of these posts. I think a lot of subreddits have been banning this kind of post in recent years because of how irritating they are.

NOTHING BUT TRASH TALK GUY
This might be just a me problem as a content creator with a following so I’m curious if other people also encounter this person. But I’ve run into guys, usually on social media, who find out I’m a fan of whatever team and then only interact with me via trash talk. And it’s constant, and it’s lame. Extremely lame trash talk. Not even good trash talk. And it comes on almost every post you make, regardless of whether the post is even about your team. I post a picture of my dog? “Yeah that dog is cute UNLIKE THE GIANTS, WHO SUCK”. It’s like this on every post for a time until the person fails to get a rise out of me (I always ignore them). If you want to come at me, at least be good at it. If you are just posting a slightly different version of THE GIANTS SUCK in the replies on every post you aren’t worth interacting with. For like a full season 2 years ago I had a Cowboys fan sending me those sorts of DMs after every post I made. I never once responded and he eventually sent me a long post about how he was sorry and he loves my work. I also never responded to that. If that kid is somehow reading this, I did in fact see your posts, and I hope you experienced character growth.

RBI IS PLURAL SO DONT SAY RBIS GUY
You remember a few paragraphs ago when I detailed the Stop Saying We guy? Yeah, it’s just that guy again, but about something else.

WEARS UNRELATED TEAM SWAG TO GAMES GUY
I will admit to being this guy. Twice, actually. The first time was when I went to Foxboro for a Patriots/Rams game. It was 2008, I wore my Eli jersey specifically to be a little shithead and get dirty looks from Pats fans bitter about the previous season. Jokes on me, the weather was too cold and I never took my jacket off so nobody saw it. But while I was at the game, I saw some other guy in a Washington jersey (I think Jason Campbell). At least I wore an unrelated team specifically to be a troll, but what the fuck was that guy doing? The other time I did it I was at an arena football game and half the audience was wearing random team jerseys because nobody owned any swag for the actual teams playing. But this guy exists at every sporting event if you look hard enough. It’ll be a cold day in hell when you go to a football game and some dickweed isn’t wearing a Steelers or Cowboys jersey out there, for a game involving neither team.

NOT PICTURED: GUY WHO THINKS YOU CAN ONLY BE A FAN OF A COLLEGE TEAM IF YOU WENT THERE
I just wanted to give this guy a shoutout. I don’t interact with him often but it came up a lot as an answer to my thread. It’s just another arbitrary unwritten rule guy, and arbitrary unwritten rules are stupid. There are so many reasons to become a fan of a team, no reason is invalid. Yes, it might be strange to be a Bama fan if you went to LSU or grew up in Montana or something, but that just gives you a story to your fandom that you can tell. If the reason you have is lame, then we can make fun of you. But being a fan of a team without going to the college is perfectly fine.

USES MINOR PLATFORM TO BE JUDGEY GUY
Yes, I am aware of the irony of making a post like this being a big judgey pants when I have my own bad habits. You don’t have to go pointing that out, because I know some of you would. Gleefull little shits.

 

New comic will upload Thursday to celebrate kickoff week like usual