Fans booing Rattler both explainable, inexplicable
The OU fans who booed Spencer Rattler and chanted for Caleb Williams didn’t get their way Saturday. Rattler stayed in the game, Williams remained on the sideline, and in the end, the Sooners beat West Virginia.
Instead, those fans got questioned by Kirk Herbstreit on the TV broadcast, lambasted by former Sooner Tre Brown on Twitter and scolded by legendary OU coach Bob Stoops on radio.
But to those Sooner fans, Daniel Wann gets you.
The professor of psychology at Murray State University is a leading expert on fan behavior, and he understands why Sooner personnel became targets for some Sooner fans.
“There really isn’t hardly anything that they can do to influence the outcome of a sporting event,” Wann said of fans, “so their identity and their ego and their self-worth, it’s all on the line, but they don’t get to go out there and throw the pass or shoot the shot or whatever. They’re stuck there with their verbalizations.
“And when screaming at the (opponent) isn’t getting you anywhere, then all that’s left is to decide that the problem is (your team) and you start to vent your frustrations and cope that way.” Sounds elementary.
Of course, the to-boo-or-not-toboo question isn’t nearly so simple. Even though booing is as old as sport, fans most often boo at officials or opponents. Bad call? Boo! Dirty play? Boo! But occasionally, fans turn it on their own team.
Should they?
And what if the target is a college athlete?
“Athletes are supposed to say they don’t care what the fans say, but of course, they do. We know that because they’re human.” Daniel Wann
Professor of psychology at Murray State University
That seemed to be the thing that triggered Stoops. He made a not-so-subtle dig at the chanting, booing fans over the weekend on social media — “Some … could hold themselves to a higher standard!!” he wrote — but then he went on KREF AM-1400 earlier this week and was much more pointed.
“Terribly disappointed,” he said. “I don’t care about Name, Image and Likeness. These guys are still college, young men. They’re playing for their team, for their school.
“A college player should never be booed or embarrassed in any fashion.”
Stoops referenced NIL, and that’s an interesting slice of this. College athletes are now able to profit off their notoriety, and none has taken advantage of that any better than Rattler. He has several endorsement deals that are likely total hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.
So, he’s a bit more like a pro athlete than college players of the past.
This is the first season where NIL has been in place, so you wonder if fans had that in the back of their mind when they began booing Rattler for another lessthan-stellar performance Saturday.
Cody Havard suspects a few other things were top of the head, too.
Like Wann, Harvard studies fan behavior, and even though he is a professor of sport commerce at the University of Memphis, he is well aware of the dynamics at OU. He did his undergrad at
Texas.
Harvard says the success the Sooners have had for more than two decades has created a high level of expectation among fans. That is the case no matter who OU plays, but against a West Virginia team oddmakers thought OU would beat by at least two touchdowns, the expectations went a little higher.
Add a belief this might be the season the Sooners break through to the College Football Playoff, and what the crimson-and-cream faithful expected to see last Saturday might be as lofty as any time in recent history.
“When you have expectations for your favorite team and if you don’t think the expectations are being met, you have two choices,” Havard said. “One, you can kind of accept that the other team played well. This is just what’s happening. Maybe our expectations were a little too high.”
Or?
“The other option is to single someone out.”
Booing your own quarterback might seem extreme to some, but Havard says it is rooted in the reason people become fans of a team in the first place. They want their affiliation with that squad to reflect positively on them.
If fans don’t think that’s happening — whether it a bad performance or a lost game — some may let their displeasure be known by booing.
“And again, that’s something you’re doing for protection,” Havard said. “You’re trying to protect your personal image and your public image.
“It’s like, ‘ We let our displeasure known, so now, it’s not our fault.’”
The connection fans feel to their team, by the way, is no minor bond.
Wann, who works in Murray, Kentucky, did a study of Kentucky basketball fans in the early 2000s. They were asked what they would say if they met someone who wanted to know 20 things about them.
“For the really diehard fans, one of the very first things that they would say was they were Kentucky basketball fans,” Wann said, “and then like one or two below that was that they were Baptist.”
Wann still chuckles at that.
“It’s like, ‘I’m a Kentucky fan! Oh, and also, I’m a Baptist,’” he said.
But even though Wann understands the psychology behind why people sometimes boo like those Sooner fans did last Saturday, he admits he doesn’t fully understand the motivation.
What did they hope would happen when they booed Rattler and chanted for Williams?
“My best guess is … they’re just venting and letting off steam,” said Wann, who has studied fan behavior for four decades.
The situation at OU reminds him of what’s happening in Chicago with Bears fans. The team drafted Justin Fields but is still starting Andy Dalton, and fans are letting their frustration with that decision be known.
“I don’t think that they really expect the owner or the coaches are going to sit down and go, ‘Well, they’re booing. I guess I should put in Justin Fields,’” Wann said. “If the coach did that, then the fans would say, ‘Well, our coach is an idiot.’”
Wann believes fans have the right to boo and even chant, but he cautions — such things have consequences even though athletes and coaches often say they don’t listen to such things, that they aren’t affected by them.
That’s what Rattler and Sooner coach Lincoln Riley have said repeatedly.
“Athletes are supposed to say they don’t care what the fans say, but of course, they do,” Wann said. “We know that because they’re human.”
Riley said earlier this week he wasn’t worried about Rattler or Williams after Saturday. Not their psyche. Not their confidence. Not their even their relationship.
“If I’ve got guys in there that have thin skin or can’t handle that, then I’ve got the wrong guys in the room,” Riley said, “and I have the right guys in the room.”
Sooner fans who booed Saturday had better hope that’s true. What if they made tough times worse? What if they compounded difficult issues? What if they added to OU’s woes?
To the OU fans who booed and chanted, I get why you wanted to do it. The psychology makes sense after hearing from folks who’ve studied fan behavior.
The practicality of it?
I’m not sure any expert could explain that.