Paul Garcia II
PHOENIX – Michael Carranza has made the 300-mile trip from his Las Vegas home twice this season to see his beloved Arizona Cardinals. His Tik Tok featuring team content has nearly 30,000 followers and two million likes.
What have the Cardinals given him in return? A 2-4 record in 2025 with four fourth quarter losses, including three that saw them either leading or tied with less than five seconds left. Yet, Carranza keeps coming back.
“The thought of leaving the team has never crossed my mind,” he said. “Yes, the Cardinals have put me through a lot and they’ve disappointed me time and time again, but I don’t have a desire to go to another team. Hopefully, by the time I’m in my grave, the Arizona Cardinals win at least one Super Bowl.”
Considering Carranza is 25, that’s not a big ask.
His loyalty does raise fascinating questions. Why are we sports fans? Why do we commit time, money and emotional well-being to sports franchises? Most important: Why are we loyal to teams that never win it all and continually break our hearts?
“We have really undersold the value of sports in the lives of fans,” said Dr. Daniel Wann, a psychologist and professor at Murray State University specializing in sports fandom. “Sports being so social in nature as a fan, it lends itself well to meeting our psychological needs.”
No one knows this better than Cardinals fans, including those who have followed the team since it arrived in Arizona for the 1988 season after relocating from St. Louis. Since then, it has a record of 244-356-2, with only seven winning seasons and six playoff appearances.
The 2025 season started with hope as the Cardinals won the first two games. Then it began … the Cardinals either had the lead or were tied in the following three games before giving it up in the final seconds. Their record in those games? Try 0-3.
Throw in a tough Week Six loss to the Indianapolis Colts, when Arizona blew another fourth quarter lead, and they’re staring up from the bottom of the NFC West.
“I feel discouraged from posting videos because we’re on this losing streak,” Carranza said. “I want to post more positive content if I can, but it just seems like over the past four weeks, it’s just negativity upon negativity.”
Even their wins this year haven’t been easy. Cardinals season-ticket holder Morgan Hagaman watched the Cardinals nearly blow a 27-3 second-half lead to the Carolina Panthers in Week Two before hanging on to win 27-22.
“They tried to lose that game,” Hagaman said. “It was kind of disappointing.”
Why do sports fans form such strong emotional bonds with sports teams? Why can’t they just take up calligraphy or go to stamp conventions like the rest of the philatelists?
One of the psychological needs that is met as a sports fan is a basic need to belong. Everyone, from extroverts to introverts, to some extent cares about belonging to a group.
“Sports are such a social enterprise,” Wann said. “When people go to games, it’s something like 97% or 98% of individuals that attend sporting events do so with friends or family.”
Carranza has build a community with the fanbase over the years.
“I’ve met a lot of great people that I wouldn’t have ever met if it weren’t for the Arizona Cardinals,” Carranza said. “I now have this sense of community and that sense of like, these are all my friends. These are all my people.”
Another psychological need fulfilled through sports fandom is the need for distinctiveness and not be “cookie cutters,” Wann said.
Fans find a sense of belonging within their own community while also engaging with other fanbases to express and reinforce their group’s unique identity.
It also provides them with meaning and purpose.
“It gives them a reason to wake up in the morning,” Wann said. “When fans are looking at a very important upcoming game, it energizes them.”
It’s easy to root for a team when its winning, but what about when it loses? Even worse, what about when it horrifically loses?
With 12:50 left in a Week 5 game against the Tennessee Titans and Arizona leading 21-6, Cardinals running back Emari Demercado broke free for what should have been a 72-yard dagger of a touchdown, but Demercado dropped the ball before crossing the goal line. Then Cardinals safety Dadrion Taylor-Demerson intercepted Titans quarterback Cam Ward with 4:46 left in the game and then fumbled his own interception.
Cue the Benny Hill Theme as the rest of the Cardinals defense kicked the ball around until it ended up in the end zone and Titans wide receiver Tyler Lockett falls on the ball for a touchdown.
“For the Cardinals to lose that game, it almost defies logic, which is OK because being a sport fan in and of itself defies logic,” Wann said. “The craziest thing about sport fans is that we are sports fans.”
Fans willingly choose to follow a team knowing that in every game, a 50% chance exists that they will end up disappointed.
“Where else is that the case?” Wann said. “No one orders a pizza and thinks there’s a 50/50 chance that I’m going to like it or it’s going to make me depressed for a week. No one is ordering that pizza. But sports fans, we just keep coming back and coming back and coming back.”
Every NFL season ends with one fan base celebrating a championship and 31 other fan bases feeling disappointed.
“The one thing that fans do better than any other group of people out there is find ways to cope. They have to, right?” Wann said. “Sport is based on somebody losing, so fans have to find ways to cope with these losses.”
Ways fans cope can come in many forms, whether it’s trying to justify a loss to better teams or finding silver linings in a solid player performance. Dealing with an extended losing streak can lead fans to want the team to tank for a better draft pick and a brighter tomorrow. Cope with the disappointment of today for the excitement of tomorrow.
Having a bad season here and there is one thing, but what about when losing becomes part of your fan identity? Being a fan of a perpetual losing team separates them from other fanbases.
“It becomes part of their lore, we’ve never won a championship, and that’s OK,” Wann said. “All the terrible things have happened to our team. We stick through it. It doesn’t matter. You might be better than us on the playing field, but you’re not better than our fan base because look at how we stick with our team.”
Voluntarily suffering has been the way of the Cardinals fans.
“When your football team puts you through a rollercoaster like this, it feels like a toxic relationship,” Carranza said. “When are you going to actually like love me and do something that actually cheers me up?”
Every fan has said, “I’m fed up with my team, I’m done,” better known in the psychology community as “cutting off reflected failure.” People don’t want to be associated with unsuccessful groups. Except for sports fans.
“If every fan followed through that said ‘enough is enough’ and was honest with that appraisal, there wouldn’t be sports,” Wann said. “Sure, there are people out there who disown their team, but for every thousand fans that say that, 99.5% are right back with the team because they’ve learned to cope, it’s too much a part of who they are for them just to say, ‘I don’t care.’”
Part of that 0.5% may be Hagaman.
“I would be surprised if I renewed my tickets next year,” Hagaman said.
When your team loses, remember it can always be worse.
“There’s always a fan base worse off than you are,” Wann said. “You know who doesn’t want to hear about Arizona Cardinals fans complaining about their team? Oakland A’s fans who no longer have a team. You think it’s bad to cry when your team loses, cry when you’re no longer a team.
“That’s a whole different level of disappointment.”
The CARDS came here to ASU and said screw everyone – we don’t need TUCSON. OK YOU WIN! something…