I am a very intense baseball fan. For roughly 162 days out of the year (and hopefully a dozen or so more), my mood is usually influenced by whether or not a team from a state I’ve barely been in wins or loses. I love being a baseball fan, but I am so hardwired to one team that it’s hard for anything that the club does to go under my radar.
Bandwagoning on another baseball team can only go so far. But it only takes a little before I’m boomeranged back to only caring about the Braves.
On the other hand, it’s been so long that I’ve even remotely cared about football. Growing up I watched the Carolina Panthers from time to time, would go to Appalachian State games, and watched the Oregon Ducks run an unconventional offense.
But as I got older, I cared less about the NFL and Oregon Ducks. Once I moved away from Boone, I hardly paid attention to the App State Mountaineers. Football became an afterthought. Less than an afterthought.
Six years in Michigan did nothing to endear me to the state’s beloved team, the Detroit Lions. Why would they? They never once made the playoffs during my time in Grand Rapids.
So why, five months into living in Washington, D.C., did I turn on a Detroit Lions game?
I don’t even remember which game it was, but afterwards, once the Lions had sealed another win, I thought to myself, “hmm, that was fun.”
A few weeks later, I watched another game, and the Lions had won yet again. I was hooked.
My girlfriend and I watched every playoff game, and for about thirty minutes, we were sitting, wondering, “Is this finally the year the Lions make the Super Bowl?”
Of course, unlike the millions of other Detroit Lions fans, I have not had to suffer through decades of misery for the hope of seeing my favorite team in the Super Bowl. For a split second, it looked like I had been gifted the glory without the pain.
Then the 49ers stormed back to beat the Lions. It was upsetting, but not in the same way a Braves playoff defeat has always been to me. I was hooked on the Lions bandwagon (one of the first members, I’d like to think).
This season was the first season I’ve consistently watched football games since I was a tween. If there was a station I could get to watch the game, I would. Out of the seventeen games this season, I think I watched thirteen, and I only saw them lose once.
This might just be the best a sports fan can ever get. Not only was the team I was bandwagoning never losing, thus eliminating that terrible feeling after a loss, but I also didn’t concern myself with the ins and outs of their daily operations like I do with baseball.
I got a Lions hat as a gift and started wearing it around on Sundays with the Lions shirt I bought at Meijer. I was truly the casual fan I could never be with baseball.
This team was even better than they were in the season before. After beating the Vikings in the final game of the season, the Lions got the top seed in the NFC, got the playoff bye, and just needed two wins to reach the Super Bowl. A championship was just ahead in the distance.
Then, in a cruel twist of fate, they met the Washington Commanders.
It might have made more sense to bandwagon with the Commanders. As an unaffiliated fan, it would make the most sense to latch on to the team who plays just nine miles away from my apartment, whose games will always be televised, and whose merchandise is everywhere in the city.
But as the game began, I realized I only knew two of the “hometown” team’s players: Jayden Daniels and Brian Robinson. The latter I only knew because of him promoting a big hat.
The Lions jumped out to an early lead. “How embarrassing would it be if the Lions lost?” I asked my girlfriend early in the first quarter. Surely, the best Lions team in franchise history wouldn’t go down with a whimper in the first round, right?
The Commanders explode for 28 in the second quarter, taking a 10-point lead into half time. Detroit’s defense has been troublesome, but after a stop to begin the second half followed by a touchdown, it looks like the team is back on track.
That feeling lasts a few seconds. The Commanders trounce the Lions in the fourth quarter. I stare blankly at the TV. I want to look away, change the channel, do anything else, but I continue watching on until the clock hits zero.
In a way, watching the Lions lose in the playoffs was worse than watching the Braves lose in the playoffs a few months earlier. I expected the Braves to lose this year. I believed I was watching the Lions first Super Bowl championship run.
But, unlike the crushing blows of the nine Braves playoff eliminations I’ve experienced in my lifetime, the pain of defeat doesn’t sting. I’ll remain on the Lions bandwagon for now, forgetting about the team until September.
And I guess that’s the best part of bandwagoning. Losses don’t stick for months.

Mitchell Barbee graduated from Calvin University with a B.A. in writing in 2021. Originally from Boone, North Carolina, he is currently residing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He enjoys hanging out with the few friends who stayed, wearing grey hoodies, and hoping that he doesn’t get sucked into the nightly wormhole of watching a baseball game.