Can "Fans" Really Be Objective?

My father used to tell a story about two oxen fighting at a fair, and one spectator asking another who happened to own on of the combatants “Isn’t this exciting?” To which the owner replied, “it all depends whose ox is getting gored”.
As “fans” we often view what is happening with a similar perspective..
It is true fan is a shortened form of fanatic, and is still used with that meaning, as in example when we refer to the antics of some of the more extreme soccer fans, although the press has taken to referring to them as “hooligans” to differentiate them from the more well behaved supporters of teams. But it is also used to denote anyone who is a follower and supporter of a team or public figure, which can lead to some confusion.
I like to think that I fit in the group of “thinking UK fans” which is why I read and post here regularly, and elsewhere rarely. I root for Kentucky, but I do not support the concept of “winning at any price”. there are only a couple of opposing team that I will automatically root against, most notably Duke, I am not likely to ever forgive the “stomp” and then the “shot”, both perpetrated by the same player (may his name be forever cursed).
I even found myself rooting (for my own selfish reasons) for the Cards to beat Syracuse just the other night, and I did think they may have gotten hosed a bit by the zebras. LOL
One of the things I find we are fighting is the “big lie” or in Orwellian term “doublethink” (“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed….” ‘1984’). In this case the constantly repeated “Calipari had two titles vacated and therefore is ‘dirty’.” It ignores the facts and draws a conclusion to benefit the viewpoint held.
And I would point out I dislike the vitriol poured out on our competition by those who “support” the Cats as much as those who pour it out on the Cats. I don’t find it necessary to put down the skills of Rivers (Duke), or Jarnell Stokes of the Vols(both teams I do not root for) to somehow promote the Cats. Am I totlally objective? No. But I try to work at being fair and a good sport in my fandom.

Your problem in pursuing an answer to this question is that you are addressing a blog community formed by self-selection. As Glenn has structured and successfully promoted it, the ASOB community is a blog catering to "U of Kentucky Wildcats Sports for the Discerning Fan." And as you will no doubt agree, our community constitutes a unique site in the sports blogosphere; it’s in a category by itself in Kentucky sports and one of only a couple like it that I know about anywhere in all of college sports. That means we’re a very small minute minority.

To expand on this theme, most of us are used to thinking of the usernames we see posted here every day as the whole ASOB community but the reality is that posters are themselves a tiny minority of this entire community. [I’d like Glenn’s verification of this little bit of hand-wavy blog traffic analysis.] While the internet dominates all other sources of sports information and analysis (link), blog traffic is generally considered to be a kind of power function – only 10% of a blog’s visitors will register, only 10% of a blog’s registered users will post, only 10% of a blog’s posters will comment regularly, and 10% of your regular commenters will generate most of your respondent content. So when you ask the question, "Can ‘Fans’ Really Be Objective," your respondents on this blog are probably not terribly representative of Kentucky fans as a whole.

I can tell you that I am not ‘objective’ and I don’t even try to be. What’s more, I can tell you that I don’t think many fans (if any) are any more objective than parents are objective about their children. I try to be reasonable, but ‘reason’ always starts from a premise and if that premise isn’t neutral, then any reasoned conclusions are necessarily biased. Fans by definition are not neutral.

When we are analyzing the team’s play. I’m a fan of many sports teams in many sports, and I can honestly say that UK fans are some of the best at taking “the hard look” at their current team. I think all fans, even BBN, have the ability to objectively assess their team against others in the country. I would go so far as to say that that ability is part of what being a true fan is — it allows you to truly appreciate the talented teams when they come along. It’s why I don’t pick UK to win the brackets every single year, even though I’ll gladly lose that bet every time.

But I don’t think it’s possible to be objective about your team when others are talking about your team. It’s kind of like your family — I can talk about my brother all day, but the day YOU start talking about my brother, I’ll whup your butt.

I do think that the BBN, even those on this here site, tend to get too worked up over what others think of us. I like being voted #1, but it’s not something that validates the team to me. I would love to see Cal get COY; he deserves it. But I don’t think not getting that will invalidate what he’s done this season. And I think that we lose sight that sometimes UK benefits from its name and history just as much as it sometimes gets punished for it. But hey, that’s what being a fan is all about!