Being a Football Fan Stinks

Let's journey together through a decade of 49ers related disappointment.

Being a football fan is quite a one-sided arrangement. 

These poor individuals are asked to buy tickets and jerseys, offer unconditional support, and invest their time and dreams into a team for what more often than not offers little or nothing in exchange. Fans get zero say in the players who are signed, how the team practices, who starts on the field, or what plays are called. Go ahead and send a letter to Jed York or Kyle Shanahan. Let me know how deafening that silence is that you receive in return. This is a one-sided relationship in which your partner might as well be that Willie McCovey statue outside of Oracle Park for all the amount of equal communication you will share.

This is a raw deal. A real drag. A bummer. It stinks and I don’t like it. But fans are expected to tolerate this nonetheless.

What’s even worse is that the team that you invest your emotions so heavily into, more often than not, is going to let you down. Even as the Patriots were setting the NFL world on fire over the past two decades, they still had three heart-crushing Super Bowl losses to the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles. Probably for the best that the 49ers passed last offseason on that choking bum, Tom Brady.

Every team’s goal should be to win the Super Bowl. I think every fan can agree on that. Fortunately, if you follow organizations such as the Lions, Raiders or Jaguars, you can ignore such details as your team doesn’t bother with winning, anyway.

But it’s the teams that are in it any given year that really grab our attention. The ones that get our hopes up and raise our expectations to obtain the ultimate prize of a Lombardi Trophy by the end of the season. Those are the ones that can break our hearts and create long lasting tragedies that are hard to shake.

Think about the Saints choking during the NFC Divisional game in 2018 against Case Keenum’s 60-yard touchdown pass to Stefon Diggs with ten seconds remaining. Blair Walsh missing a 27-yard chip shot field goal, voiding the Vikings opportunity to take a two-point lead on the Seattle Seahawks with 22 seconds left in the 2016 NFC wild card. Tony Romo fumbling a field goal snap in the 2006 playoffs, sealing the deal for the Seahawks to advance. All agonizing defeats that joined the haunted “what could have been” cemetery.

And what about the 49ers? Name me an NFL franchise that has had more tragic losses than San Francisco the past decade. Ready to recap? Strap in kids, because this is going to be a doozy.

Starting in 2011, after nearly a decade of complete ineptitude from a floundering franchise, Jed York stumbled across a savior in Jim Harbaugh, whose team went 13-3 that season and was destined for greatness. Well, that is until Kyle Williams fumbled the ball away not once but twice in the NFC Championship game to allow the New York Giants to progress and eventually win the Super Bowl. 

Catching punts is hard.

A year later, a soft lob to the corner of the end zone from Colin Kaepernick to Michael Crabtree went incomplete, obliterating the 49ers late fourth-quarter comeback attempt in Super Bowl XLVII against the Baltimore Ravens. Devastating.

The very next season, the Kaepernick-Crabtree duo returned to disappoint yet again with another thwarted comeback attempt, this time against the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship game. Richard Sherman gave his infamous, “When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that is the result you are going to get!” line after that one, so I guess there was at least a parting gift for 49ers fans.

Adding insult to injury, Sherman returned to haunt the 49ers several months later during their inaugural season at Levi’s Stadium. After a 19-3 beatdown of the Santa Clara, formerly San Francisco, 49ers, Sherman helped christen the new stadium by chomping down on some turkey leg at midfield. Embarrassing your opponents creates quite an appetite.

Shall I keep going? After Harbaugh led the team to a 44-19 record in four seasons, Jed York dismissed the successful coach in a “mutual parting of ways,” which is a line I might use to soften the blow when explaining to my family why my wife of over five years decided to pack her bags and leave without saying goodbye.

For a variety of reasons, the following members of the organization would follow Harbaugh out the door shortly after his dismissal, culminating in one of the worst off-seasons for any team in recent memory: Patrick Willis (retired), Chris Borland (retired), Anthony Davis (retired), Frank Gore (free agency), Justin Smith (retired), Mike Iupati (free agency), Chris Culliver (free agency), Vic Fangio (left to become the defensive coordinator for the Bears) Perrish Cox (free agency), and Crabtree (free agency).

Finally, after a top-notch sideshow circus act for the next two seasons from Jim Tomsula and Chip Kelly, the team finally struck gold again when their newest head coach, Kyle Shanahan, led them to the Super Bowl in the 2019 season. If you hadn’t heard, San Francisco ended up losing that game in epic fashion, too. Fortunately, the 49ers after party was apparently a huge success.

Was that recap as much fun for you to read as it was for me to write?

How do 49ers fans deal with this much excruciating level of disappointment? John Lynch and George Kittle aren’t busting through your front door anytime soon to raise a glass of champagne to toast to the good times, so don’t expect them to comfort you during the bad times, either. Fans are left to their own devices to figure out and wonder, what the heck just happened here? And no matter how much you want to explain the brutal losses away or make excuses for why they happened, it will never change the fact that your team lost and the other team won.

So what can fans do to process and move on? As the Dalai Lama once said, “Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength. No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful an experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster” (the Lama also stiffed me once on a tip when I was caddying for him, but that’s a story for another day). Hope is mostly all fans have to hang their hats on when it comes to the teams they support, too. The majority of these loyal supporters have no other choice. They have no say, no voice, and no control over the team, so what else is there to do other than hope for a better outcome in the future?

But I take it even one step further. I say embrace the losses. Laugh them in the face. Strip them of the power they hold and free yourself of the burden. There’s levity to be found even during the most brutal experiences. The 49ers most recent high-profile meltdown included blowing a 10-point lead with less than 12 minutes remaining in the Super Bowl, but you can’t help but laugh at the fact that the 49ers defense did take the time to gather for a group photo near the end of the game, as if they had the win in the bag. What else is there to do, but laugh at something so ridiculous?

Players come and players go. Coaches change and teams rise and fall. Through it all, fans are drawn back every season by the hope that their team will be right back in the thick of things again by the end of the season. And even when things seem to be at their worst, fans can and should find the levity that exists around the sport to allow them the ability to move forward. Best of all, they won’t have to be the ones responsible for picking up the pieces in the days after those eventual inevitable crushing losses, figuring out where to go from here with cutting or trading players, firing staff members, or questioning their own God-given abilities as an individual apart of the organization that played a part in those miserable defeats. 

Perhaps being absolved of all responsibility and say into the inner workings of the teams that they hold so dear isn’t such a raw deal for fans after all.