Sports Fans Are Shippers
Sports really is just Yaoi for straight men, isn’t it?
The unintended homoeroticism of football has been a long-running joke on this comic and honestly, amongst sports fans in general, for those with enough self-confidence in themselves to admit it. Sports is gay as hell. It’s great! I’m glad we have an outlet for dudes to bond and get emotional and share fantasies they have. The most annoying sports fans are the ones who refuse to acknowledge the parallels. The ones who judge other people’s interests and hobbies as lame or trash. The older I get the more I see how all of our behavior is the same shit but about different subjects.
What is speculating about trades and draft picks and free agent signings if not just…shipping? Fanfiction? Putting two guys together on a team and imagining what could be? Isn’t it just sports fans getting wet over different ships? You see that flood of photoshops that always comes out the instant a player starts getting mocked as a trade option? It’s fanart of their fantasies! Fanart of characters! No, they aren’t kissing, but the fans are getting horny for it in their own way. These new team signings are indeed meant to take their favorite team to a championship climax. That’s why it’s yaoi for straight men. It’s all the same emotional fantasy stuff, just without the kissing and the fucking. Maybe. Players still don’t talk about what goes on at the bottom of a pile after a fumble.
It is very funny to watch online fandoms of various properties get made fun of by sports fans when we all do the same shit. Picking a favorite team and placing the other team as automatic enemies feels the same as Twilight girls choosing Jacob or Edward. Can we really mock fans of The Bachelor when we sit at our computers frantically f5’ing the instant free agency hits so we can see who choose who? Isn’t discussing whether Jordan or Lebron being the GOAT the same thing as arguing if Goku could beat Saitama or Batman beat Superman? There is a term in Japan called a “Fujoshi” that is essentially a somewhat derogatory term for woman who likes manga/anime/etc featuring gay relationships. You’d be fooling yourself to think there aren’t sports fujoshis. We laugh at people who have shelves of anime girl figurines and tons of manga and body pillows while we celebrate cool guys who build man caves absolutely decked out with team and sports memorabilia. I have a custom-made football blanket. I have a Giants pillowcase. My office is plastered with Giants stickers and posters and clothing. How can we laugh at otakus when we spend hours of every week glued to the TV to see our own favorite characters do cool things and slap each other on the ass? Your trash might be different from my trash, but we are in the same dumpster.
Soon free agency hits, with the draft right after. I have a proposal. When you see people “mocking” players to a team or whatever, just say shipping. Aaron Rodgers is being shipped to multiple teams. Cam Ward is being shipped to the Titans, or Browns, or maybe the Giants. Might make mock draft season much more fun.
I need to go back and tag all my yaoi joke comics.
This of course is the same sport where the tush push meme refuses to die
Fun fact: 腐女子 fujoshi literally means “rotten/spoiled girl.” As in food spoiling.
What would my love of the Tampa Bay Storm (I’m Kurt Warner’s Arena Bowl Ring for those who remember 2016) or Miami Dolphins be considered? TargStorm, StormToad, Targfin? DolToad?
We need to give fans shipping names for them & their teams (also, SuhWake/WakeSuh is the best IRL d-line shipping of the Salary Cap era (1995-) :P)
Does this make Micheal Vick, Vegeta? Both did horrible crimes (dog fighting, enslaving planets for Freeza/mass killing), then paid for their crimes (jail, died), then had a redemption arc (advocating for new laws against dog fighting and lagainat leaving animals in hot cars, fatherhood).
As someone who likes football and anime (…kind of, mostly just a small subsection of old traditionally animated stuff*), I’ve never “shipped” characters together, or football players onto my own team. Beware, monsters are among us: I might be a total psychopath.
*Okay, I dislike or outright despise 99.9% of anime as well as pretty much the whole subculture, but despite that, a number of my all-time favorite movies and shows are anime, so I guess I can say I “kind of” like it. Perfect Blue, Angel’s Egg, Whisper of the Heart, Millennium Actress, Who’s Left Behind, My Neighbor Totoro, Gunsmith Cats, Jarinko Chie, Pom Poko, Tokyo Godfathers, Royal Space Force, The Fantastic Adventures of Unico, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Roujin Z, Memories, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind…and those are just a bunch of ancient movies, and there are plenty more great ones besides those.