The Most Obnoxious Fan Bases in Sports

21.

It's one thing to deal with an obnoxious fan, it's another thing to deal with a swarm of them. Especially if you live in enemy territory. While most people see sports for what they are (distractions) others see them as the primary reason for living. This list is made up of those types of people along with others who feel entitled to titles, turn self-loathing into a pastime, or dominate the national conversation with their constant spotlight-hogging. Fans of these teams often say "haters gonna hate" or some equally stupid variation, but the fact is these teams comprise most of the sports coverage in this country. A few are outliers who make this list for reasons we'll get into.

You may scroll down this list and think that some of these choices are based upon the actions of a few people, but we did our best to find organizations whose fans have crafted an identity. You may disagree with a few but keep in mind that just because you’re a fan of the team doesn’t mean each slide pertains to you. Just food for thought. Here’s The Most Obnoxious Fan Bases in Sports.

20.Honorable Mention: St. Louis Cardinals

Best example of obnoxiousness: Pictured above.

Growing up my neighbors were Cardinals fans, in fact one of their sons has been my best friend for the last 20 years. Because of that I always respected St. Louis as a relatively small(er) market that packed their stadium every year, and loved their baseball team.

But then, a couple nights ago, a few (hopefully) drunken fans made asses of themselves and the organization by proxy (sorry Cards fans, all it takes is a few). Here's a dead giveaway that you're a dickhole: You're doing something fun (like, going to a playoff game) and you go out of your way to argue with people (like, protesters), instead of leaving them alone (like, any not-insane-person). Then you improvise by taping a piece of paper to your back that says "I AM Darren Wilson," because of all the causes in the world to get behind—fuck it—why not just choose that one?

19.New York Jets

Best example of obnoxiousness: Being too over the top for even Fireman Ed.

Personally, we don't mind Fireman Ed, but a bunch of other people did, and that's why he's now just Fireman Ed. Yes, Jets fans proved to be so obnoxious that instead of merely heckling out-of-towners they turned on one of their own for his support of (then) quarterback Mark Sanchez. On the same night Sanchez "butt-fumbled," the Jets fans laid into Ed so bad that they forced him to leave his self-appointed position and return home (on Thanksgiving, no less) where he promptly deleted his Twitter account. Add that to the fact that they boo every single first round draft pick the franchise makes and you understand why they get (at least) a token nod on this list.

18.Montreal Canadiens

Best example of obnoxiousness: Rioting after advancing past the first round of the 2008 playoffs.

Rioting has become a time honored tradition of any fan base that has won a championship. There's something about pride in one's city that makes a fan want to burn a small chunk of it. It's totally fucked up, but who's going to stop it, you? We don't think so. Still, notice we said that rioting occurs after a team has won a "championship." Well, Montreal Canadiens fans jumped the gun and opted to torch five police cars after winning the first round of the 2008 playoffs. Thankfully their one-seeded Canadiens didn't survive the second round due to them either A) choking or B) doing a favor for the general welfare of Montreal. They also heckled one of their own players almost every time he touched the puck, whilst another former player and coach referred to them as "gutless bastards."

17.Chicago Bears

Best example of obnoxious: Repeating "Da Bears" every fall Sunday for the past 20+ years.

For the record, I'm a fan of the Chicago Bears, and yet I can see the annoyances with our base through friends and relatives, which is why I watch every game by myself with my cell phone turned off. Everything's the end of the world. Just take this season. Week One, tough loss to Buffalo, all week call radio and the paper were littered with comments about how this team sucks. Week two, win over San Francisco, all week call radio and the paper were littered with comments about how Seattle had better look over their shoulder. Chicago doesn't give a damn about anything besides the Bears and so it's either fans constantly feeling bad for themselves after every loss, or shouting about the Super Bowl after every quick start.

Also, watch the fuck out if you're a subpar player.

16.Duke Basketball

Best example of obnoxiousness: Passing out "cheat sheets" to improve heckling.

Reaching your hands out to try to annoy someone is pretty much the definition of obnoxious. So is passing out cheat sheets that instruct fans on how to heckle. Or, chanting "How's your grandma?" at an opposing player whose grandma died the week before. Oh, and here's a letter from a student who was pissed that Elton Brand left school early that basically feeds into the stereotype that Duke's enrollment is filled with people who have no real problems to complain about.

It should go without saying that this was in an era before you could just tweet "fuk u" @ someone on Twitter.

15.SEC Football

Best example of obnoxiousness: Football season.

We get it you're good at football (outside of Vanderbilt) and not so good at academics (outside of Vanderbilt). Just as the Yankees should win titles because they have a bottomless checkbook, the SEC should win titles because they have a bottomless standard for "college material." Seriously, check an Alabama comment section sometime and you'll realize that often the only two words spelled correctly are "Roll Tide."

14.Ohio State Football

Best example of obnoxiousness: Football season.

It's one thing to never shut up about your national prominence when you're nationally prominent (see: last slide). It's another to not shut up about it when you no longer are. Enter Ohio State (or Notre Dame if that's your thing) whose fan base constantly shouts about "SEC bias" while never backing up their own over-the-top homer rhetoric. You want to know why the Big Ten is irrelevant? They constantly lay turds in big, nationally televised games. Look no further than Ohio State, the former power of the conference whom got the SEC started off on their roll by losing back-to-back national title games in both 2007 and then again in 2008. Last year, when they were sitting at No. 2 in the country, they wondered why they weren't No. 1. Then they got crushed, didn't even win the conference, and lost their non-title bowl game anyway.

13.Chicago Cubs

Best example of obnoxiousness (tie): Treatment of Steve Bartman/Blaming a goat for their plight anything.

Pretty much all my friends were (and still are) Cubs fans, so it’s possible I’ve just been overwhelmed with their complaints my entire life. That means it's possible that I've interpreted a local phenomenon as a nationwide one. Still, if they ever win the World Series (which is bound to happen one day, if only by sheer luck) watch them start a riot that'll make The Great Chicago Fire look like a cookout.

The Cubs are currently sitting on the longest championship drought in (major) American sports history. As of now, they’ve gone 106 years without hanging a World Series championship banner, which means their fruitless stretch will extend to 107 years, minimum. Still, every time they have a halfway decent team they flood talk radio, newspaper polls, etc. with talk of how “This is the year,” as if any of them have been alive long enough to see what a championship team actually looks like. It’s one thing for garden-variety fans to be overly optimistic, but the fact that the Tribune Company owned the Cubs up until 2010 meant that they were pushing their crappy franchise via reporters through one of the nation’s biggest newspapers.

Currently, the Cubs have been absolutely wretched for the past four years but it hasn’t stopped the never-ending hopes of the fan base from bragging about prospects and a future dynasty, as if no one’s ever busted in pro sports before. You’d think more than a century of grasping at straws would make you—I don’t know—a little more cautious with your expectations? But then again you've never seen such blind optimism.

12.Los Angeles Lakers

Best example of obnoxiousness: A never ending sense of entitlement (and we won't even mention the celebrities who simply go to be seen).

If there was a Yankees of the NBA, these guys would be it. For those keeping score at home, that's 31 conference titles and 16 championships, five of which have come since 2000. Face it Lakers diehards, you have seen your team win enough to last the rest of your lives, your children's lives, your children's children's lives–you get the point. Still, you always want more. While Knicks and Cavs fans have waited generations for a ring (holdout until June, Cleveland), Lakers fans are wondering why they have to wait a few years for a contender again. It also hurts that they're sharing shopping centers, playgrounds and bumper-to-bumper traffic with a (until recently) perpetual loser. The Clippers are still waiting to see their team in the Finals, so we doubt they have a lot of sympathy for a fan base that's waited a whole *looks it up* wow, FOUR years since the last one.

11.Cleveland Browns

Best example of obnoxiousness: Well, you can't go wrong with that picture up top.

When I set out to make this list I wasn't thinking about the Cleveland Browns at all. And then I came across this picture and decided to look a little bit more into Cleveland, whom (in fairness) did have their team abandon them overnight. We're not sure if that justifies hurling a (probably) full bottle at other human beings, but it at least explains some of the angst. Still, let us consider three events.

The hurling of bottles over an overturned replay in 2001. This followed an incident in 1995, the last game at the Browns' old stadium, where they tore out seats and set small fires in the stands. If you're wondering if anyone was struck with a bottle, there was at least an assistant coach hit, as well as the four-year-old son of another assistant. Was it our man up top? Well, it's kind of late to piece it together.

Incident number two, this guy literally pissing on Art Modell's grave.

10.

And even if you sympathize with people peeing on the graves of others, here's an irrationally angry man behind the wheel of a truck.

9.

This is why we do research.

8.New York Yankees

Best example of obnoxiousness: A passed down belief of Yankee exceptionalism.

You either love or hate this team for the same reason; they spend a lot of money on big-time free agents that other teams developed (though, god forbid somebody do it to them). It’s one thing to overpay for hometown favorites and (consequently) drive up the salaries of every player in baseball, but to then brag about it is a little much. I mean, with how often they spend the most money, they should be winning the championship, no? Fortunately the strategy no longer seems to be working, as steroid testing has taken away from an established veteran’s ability to produce late into his career, which is something GM Brian Cashman hasn’t seemed to figure out yet.

7.Washington Redskins

Best example of obnoxiousness: Aggressive defense of the franchise name.

While I don't really care that much about the Redskins name anything, I at least understand why people are trying to change it. What I don't understand is donning a headdress to be intentionally antagonistic. At least when they were pigs in drag, it wasn't pissing anybody off (besides, possibly, their wives). Now they seem to have built an "us against the world" mentality, defending their team name because—damn it—those Native Americans always get their way. To them it's insulting, to you it's just a name. And as soon as you change it you'll realize it won't effect team tradition. You're a 6-10 team with it, and we have faith that you can be a 6-10 team without it.

6.Miami Heat

Best example of obnoxiousness: The LeBron Era.

A lot of winning teams have endured bandwagon fans, but no franchise in recent memory better highlights this loathsome practice than the Heat. If you're a Heat Cavs fan you may say "Everybody has bandwagon fans." Okay, yeah, I hear you. Anyway, here's a bunch of Heat fans leaving early from Game Six of the 2013 Finals:

5.

Apparently they all had something bigger going on that night since they couldn't even wait 28 seconds.

Moments later many of them tried to rush back in.

4.Boston Red Sox

Best Example of Obnoxiousness (tie): Expecting the whole country to feel sorry for them for 86 years/Treatment of Bill Buckner.

For 86 years they blamed a curse instead of incompetent management and poorly playing teams. That regional problem became a national narrative that was brought up every preseason through October since, well, at least as long as we’ve been alive Then they finally won a championship and instead of being humbled by their eight-and-a-half decades of futility, they bragged incessantly and continued shoving their annually overhyped team down America’s throat, flipping from “Woe is us,” to “We’re the fucking best,” literally overnight.

3.Oakland Raiders

Best example of obnoxiousness: Their willingness to literally fight for a terrible team.

Raiders fans have always been there to intimidate anyone who dare enter their stadium donning anything but the silver and black. Sometimes (if no other options are available), they simply take that aggression out on each other:

2.

You have to wonder why it is that they're still so passionate as to brawl in the men's room, when they haven't sniffed the postseason (or even a winning season) in a dozen years. When you enter a stadium and have a chance to experience the fist of a fellow fan, you know you're dealing with a terrifying and obnoxious base.

That gets you ranked up high, but there's still an entire town even more widely known for the antics of their followers.

1.All of Philadelphia

Best example of obnoxiousness: Intentionally throwing up on a little girl.

We’re willing to concede that all fan bases can be a little obnoxious at times. And because of that we concede that maybe we’re a little hard on Philadelphia, a town that notoriously booed Santa Claus and bombarded him with snowballs.

What else has happened since then, anyway?

A fan ran onto the field and got tasered. It happens. Fans run on the field everywhere. Plus you can probably blame security for using the taser. What else? Fans cheered as Michael Irvin lay motionless, potentially paralyzed. Uh, yeah, okay…we get it? He was a rival player who was a star. Is that all? Oh wait, a guy stuck two fingers down his throat to intentionally vomit on an 11-year-old.

Alright, dude. Fuck. This is what happens when you try to hear out Philadelphia.

We can go through several other stories from booing Donovan McNabb as he was drafted, to Flyers fans climbing in penalty boxes, or even attempting to prostitute themselves for playoff tickets, but at some point people give up on you. This includes opposing fans, internet writers and even the local police department who went undercover as Saints fans to draw the ire of drunken Eagles supporters (such as that, above) at a playoff game last season.

[Editor's Note - As both the editor and a Philly fan, I feel it's my place to clear the air.

First–snowballs at Santa is the lamest, most trite argument against Philadelphia fans in the world. Everybody knows this. It happened almost 50 years ago and was the result of a skinny, drunk 19 year-old raggedy replacement Santa trotting out at halftime for a 2-11 team. It's so widely hated as a stereotype that there are literally dozens of historical thinkpieces written about it. Educate yourselves.

Second–we're not even close to the most obnoxious fans in the country. Bay Area fans are. You think booing Michael Irvin's injury was low? How about stabbing opposing fans in the parking lot after a game? And doing it again. And again. Or how about 31 people getting arrested at Levi's Stadium's opener this year? Or assaulting a fellow fan in the stadium bathroom and leaving him partially paralyzed? That happened LAST WEEK. But yeah, Philly fans are the worst for that guy throwing up on that kid four years ago ("Pukemon" died suddenly in June at age 25, by the way).

I'm not saying we're not obnoxious, I'm just saying the national perception is twisted. Philly fans are passionate, boo loudly, and have a reputation for getting violent. But San Francisco and Oakland fans ACTUALLY GET DEADLY VIOLENT ON A REGULAR BASIS.

Wake up, America. It's time to replace Philly supporters with Bay Area supporters as the default shitty fans in your minds.]