In many hometowns, attending a formal event like a wedding or a funeral means adhering to strict, somber dress codes. You will certainly not see people dressed in a blue athletic jersey with the number 17 sewn prominently across the front.
Yet, it feels as though just about everywhere else—at neighborhood sports bars, down the aisles of the local supermarket, walking through residential neighborhoods, and even during corporate video calls on casual Fridays—loyal fans are proudly honoring Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen. Admirers are sharing in the excitement of his growing fame, celebrating his stellar athletic performances on the gridiron, and joining together with one unified voice to cheer on his future prospects. That fierce dedication is proudly displayed on pullovers, heavy hoodies, casual t-shirts, and everyday coffee mugs.
As the autumn football season progresses into its early weeks, the sentiment on the street is that "we" are winning, and winning quite spectacularly.
"We"
The use of the pronoun "we" in sports fandom is common, yet fascinating when examined closely. Half a century ago, a young psychologist named Robert B. Cialdini, alongside his academic colleagues, noticed a very compelling psychological phenomenon while conducting field experiments regarding sports fans and their fluctuating emotions.
The researchers discovered that ordinary people consistently tended to personally associate themselves with a professional sports team’s success, even though they had no direct, tangible involvement in the team’s operations. While the deafening roar of a loud "home-field advantage" might arguably serve as an exception—with the collective "13th Man" crowd noise attempting to drown out an opposing quarterback’s audible calls—no spectator sitting in the stadium stands gets to actually throw a touchdown pass. Nobody sitting in the front row will suddenly leap onto the field to make a game-changing interception.
Though spectators sympathize deeply and with all their heart, physically feeling the vibe as mirror neurons fire rapidly in their brains, nobody watching safely from home can realistically expect that their favorite team will hear their individual gleeful shouts and encouraging murmurs from the living room. Still, devoted followers proudly and personally bask in the warm glow of their team’s hard-fought victories.
With loyalty rewarded on the field, Monday mornings following a hometown victory are noticeably bouncier across the region. Fans arrive at work asking rhetorical questions: We looked remarkably good on offense yesterday, didn’t we? Our defensive coaching staff flawlessly coordinated the blitz and the secondary coverage. We stayed remarkably tough on critical third-down conversion plays. After Cialdini first documented this widespread tendency, subsequent sports psychologists categorized and anagrammed the enthusiasm as "BIRG-ing." BIRG-ing is formally defined as the act of "basking in reflective glory."
Basking in reflective glory functions quite similarly to getting a natural suntan outdoors. The task itself may initially seem active and even purposeful, but in reality, the individual is simply lying there passively, soaking in the ambient light of a shared statement that "we’re number one."
Testing BIRG-ing
Fifty years ago, the team of behavioral psychologists set out to rigorously test and demonstrate the BIRG-ing phenomenon through a series of three distinct field studies. The first observation looked directly at how frequently university students wore apparel that clearly identified their academic institution by name or logo. Understandably, researchers found that when local university teams were winning their games, school sweatshirts appeared much more frequently on the student body than when the athletic teams were losing. This surge in apparel was especially prominent on Mondays immediately following a weekend game—a behavioral pattern that remains unsurprising and plain to see today.
The second and third field trials, however, yielded significantly subtler and far more interesting results. Students whose collegiate team had emerged victorious tended to more frequently personalize their team and strongly identify with it by utilizing the first-person plural pronoun. When students routinely said "we" while referring to a victorious team, the researchers concluded that they were actively proclaiming a psychological wish to enhance their own public image as a direct reflection of the team’s shared success. When those students said "we," they literally meant "they," of course, but they deliberately spoke the word "we" as if they, themselves, had personally managed and executed the victory on the field.
And that specific kind of basking—the unearned sharing of and taking credit for athletic triumph—carries a touch of irony. Because, once again, however much television viewers strain sympathetically, yelling positively from the safety of a comfortable couch or living room recliner, it is professional athletes down on the muddy field executing the grueling physical plays for a touchdown. A simple psychological affiliation proved to be a sufficient impetus for fans to trumpet success and publish their swelling pride. In modern times, this swelling pride frequently edges over into overt gloating, visible on fans’ lapel buttons, automobile bumper stickers, residential yard signs, and glowing inflatable lawn ornaments.
The "Good" in Good Feelings
It is remarkably easy to list the societal dividends that stem from these overwhelmingly good feelings. Common admiration draws a diverse local community together in a spirit of shared devotion. At a time when various malign forces elsewhere in society actively work to profit by dividing and isolating populations, professional sports stake out a largely non-partisan circle of communal spirit that gathers people together and bolsters morale.
Families, too, even when scattered far-flung across the country, will tune into the big televised game back home and share active FaceTime commentary during halftime breaks. Furthermore, the core soul of athletic competition itself—the fundamental human drive to excel in a high-stakes, dangerous game—provides powerful, tangible object lessons in resilience, physical strength, and unrelenting persistence.
Dedicated fans in a northern football town know how to weather a tough loss on the gridiron just as easily as they weather a debilitating lake-effect snow whiteout. When loyal fans shout "Go Bills!", they often mean much more than a simple score prediction; they are communicating that "we’re hanging in there together."
Togetherness
Noted sociologist and play theorist Thomas Henricks describes this specific feeling of equalizing togetherness using the sociological term communitas. Finding a common commitment and a central, shared passion, Henricks argues, is one vital way that individuals manage to find their truer selves.
Losing oneself temporarily within the collective energy of the game—a process of healthy de-individualization—actually helps individuals find where they truly belong within a broader social fabric. Within the specific context of competitive sports, this feeling of communitas is typically temporary and event-driven. Yet, it rarely becomes completely ephemeral because it is inherently likely to recur whenever celebrants gather again. The roaring crowds will inevitably return to the physical stadium, and local fan clubs will once again convene at neighborhood gathering spots. Finding where they belong consistently puts these fans in a generous, upbeat mood.
When "We" Becomes "They"
While some loyal fan bases remain extraordinarily generous and remarkably patient through thick and thin, others show distinct behavioral shifts. Win or lose, game after game for decades, the famously dedicated Cleveland Browns packed their stadium’s end zone with body-painted followers who affectionately called themselves the Dog Pound. Similarly, carrying the painful collective memory of four consecutive unsuccessful Super Bowl appearances in the 1990s, the Buffalo Bills retained the unwavering loyalty of their steadfast fans despite failing to reach the NFL playoffs for 17 consecutive seasons.
Conversely, in major metropolitan markets like Los Angeles, Miami, and Phoenix, prolonged sub-.500 athletic seasons promptly result in sparsely attended games and rapidly evaporating television ratings.
Sports psychologists have documented the exact psychological opposite phenomenon to BIRG-ing, identifying it with the acronym CORF-ing, which stands for "cutting off reflective failure." Former or fair-weather fans will actively and intentionally distance themselves from a chronically losing team so as not to be put in a negative public light. The promotional yard signs come down from the front lawn, the expensive team jersey goes back into the dark corners of the bedroom dresser, and team-themed novelty buttons end up tossed into a kitchen junk drawer alongside unlabeled keys and expired grocery coupons.
Tellingly, research indicates that disgruntled fans systematically change their pronoun choice when their favorite team suffers through a prolonged competitive drought. The comfortable pronoun We swiftly transforms into the detached pronoun They.
They lost the game. They couldn’t convert crucial third-down plays. They could not defend against the opposing pass rush. They could not avoid costly penalties. They fumbled the ball at the worst possible moment.
Under these conditions, communal generosity and public forbearance drain away entirely. We have not failed, the disgruntled fan insists, but they—those professional chokers—surely have.
Ultimately, this defensive linguistic shift makes complete psychological sense. Personal self-esteem remains constantly at stake in the tribal landscape of sports fandom, and for passionate observers, the direct opposite of pride is not quiet humility, but deep, lingering shame.