The female football fan faces a host of unique challenges, says Dr. Anne Osborne. (Credit: Adam Pitts)

Football is a way of life in Louisiana, but for those of us who didn’t tailgate at two, becoming a proper fan can be a daunting task. It’s harder still for female fans – how do women fit into a hyper-masculine sport like football?

LSU Associate Professor Dr. Anne Osborne studies exactly that. Last year, Dr. Osborne started a comparative study between the marketing of Premiere League soccer and the NFL. Looking at two very different “footballs,” she became interested in how female fans interacted with their sports.

Since, she has shifted her focus to American football and the NFL, and, in the process, has developed a new way of thinking about female fandom.

DIG: Talk to me about how the sports project started.

Dr. Anne Osborne: It was a very different experience attending Premiere League games. You see very few women at Premier League matches, relative to the number of women at an NFL game. That sparked an interest I had in gender issues, and how female fan experiences may be different than your typical male fan experience, particularly when you’re talking about fans of hyper-masculine sports like the NFL or Premiere league soccer.

EN: What does the research look like?

AO: We [Osborne works with a research partner in Ohio] focused on the Saints, Steelers, and Browns. Part of that was proximity and that we know those teams best. But they are also really interesting case studies. The Steelers have been a perennial powerhouse. The Browns haven’t been formidable for a number of years, yet they still have this strong fan base. Then there’s the Saints, who had this unbelievable transformation from the “A’ints” to this amazing team that has raised the hopes of an entire city and region. Last year I was traveling pretty much every weekend, going to games in three different cities. It sounds, honestly, like more fun than it is. I was so busy watching people watch football, I wasn’t watching the games. It was almost entirely participant observation. I also have a group of Saints fans I’ve been following for the last two years, 15-20 people who all tailgate together, and all sit together. I go down and tailgate with them, then follow up with interviews. I have a group of Steelers fans that gets together and watch games here in Baton Rouge. A lot of those folks don’t even know I’m doing research, they just think I’m a fan [Osborne, a Pittsburgh native, is a die-hard Steelers fan]. I’ve done interviews with some of them, too.

EN: Have you come up with a profile of this “female fan?”

AO: I don’t think there’s one profile of the female fan, but we’ve come up with an interesting way to look at female fandom generally. Most of the research done on sports fans has been fairly quantitative. It has involved scales to measure behavior that are presumed to be indicative of being a fan. How often do you wear a team jersey or logo? How often do you decorate? Does your house have team paraphernalia? How often do you read about or follow a team online, in newspapers, or television? Quantitatively they measure that, and you can then differentiate what they consider “avid” fans from “mild” fans or even spectators.

EN: Like Steelers jersey three times a week versus…

AO: Versus “I never take it off,” or “I don’t actually own any team wear.” That makes perfect sense on [the] face of it, but there are people who are really devoted fans that don’t behave in those typical manners, so the scales fail to capture them. Women in particular.

Women have other constraints and pressures on how they express their fandom. Women are expected to, oftentimes, to dress in a certain way. That may not entail wearing your team jersey three times a week, whereas a guy can get away with doing that. So, what we’ve proposed is a different way of conceiving of fandom. Instead of using these scales and trying to quantify between “fans” and “not-fans,” what we’re suggesting is fandom is “performative.” You can think of it almost like performing a role on stage. You engage in this performance based on the audience to which you’re performing. You have a loose script that you work off of, but there’s also an improvisational element. You adapt those performances based on the audiences, and their response.

EN: I recently had one of those “woman fan” performances. A guy picked me up at my house and drove me to go watch the game with his friends. I sat on the corner of the couch, all of them making sure I was okay. They were totally boggled that I was just enjoying the game!

AO: Right. And there’s lots of testing. If you don’t present like a normal football fan, which to most folks here reads “male” – that’s the major definer, it’s not race or socio-economic – they start asking questions. “Do you know this about this?” When I tell people I’m a Steelers fan I get a lot of, “Oh, who was your favorite player?” It’s trying to see if I’m a real fan based on my level of knowledge, my history. I don’t think guys have to go through that kind of vetting process that women have to go through. Women almost have to overcompensate with their fandom, become that much more knowledgeable if you want to be taken seriously.

EN: What are some other examples of challenges for the female fan?

AO: One of the classic examples from the research last season was at a game, Steelers at Cleveland. It’s a huge rivalry and a large group of women were there together. They were standing up and cheering and yelling, being very rowdy. That performance was “typical fan performance,” but it was a group of women, so the way the Browns fans reacted was to stand up and start shouting at them, “Get back in the kitchen!” So the response was a very gendered response.

EN: What about your observations of LSU football?

AO: There are interesting regional performances of fandom that you see here. More formal dress than you see in other regions. Here, like everything else, so much of the fandom is fused with food. v here is a much more elaborate affair than anywhere else I’ve been. That’s a reflection of overall culture here. Any sort of celebration is about food and gathering. It is rooted in sense of community, and the ties to the place. A lot of our students have been immersed in fandom since they were born because their families have a legacy.

EN: So for those of us that are new to campus, that don’t have that legacy, how do we become fans?

AO: It’s only when you get here, and start doing the fandom, that you become a fan. I was a Penn State fan when I was at Penn State, but I’ve been here long enough, and performing long enough as a LSU fan, that I’m a huge LSU fan. If you think about it as performance, it’s actually through performing that you become what it is. It’s partly just a matter of, if you want to engage, recognizing what “it” is. Otherwise you could simply choose not to be an LSU football fan.

EN: That’s not possible!

AO: Then it’s a matter of how much the performances you are doing become part of your own self-concept. It’s easy enough for any of us to go out and “fake it,” but maybe if you fake it long enough, it actually takes hold. That would be my advice. Just try it, going out there and going along. If you enjoy it, it just naturally becomes part of who you are.