We sports fans can be a demanding bunch. We want to have competitive balance; we want a team/athlete that rises above the rest and dominate the sport. We want the athletes to be model citizens AND shameless exhibitionists. Sometimes when we go to a sporting event, we are torn between two (possibly opposite) goals — victory or entertainment. We may want our favourite team to win, but we also want the athletes to entertain us, even if that means a guaranteed loss.
Part of the competitive balance issue can be attributed, I think, to our attention span. Many of us constantly want something new (I am guilty of that sometimes). When a new champion, especially an individual/team that we support, emerges, we (and the sports writers) proclaim that the new champion will be the athlete/team to beat for the near future. However, it seems that we can't wait to knock the new champion off its pedestal soon enough. It may take only days for the commentators and fans to murmur about what the champion has (or, more likely, has not) done to ward off challengers. We dissect every move the champion makes and if it struggles to repeat the performance, many of us can't wait to put the label "one hit wonder" fast enough.
From what was written above, it seems that (to me anyway) sports fans want a champion who can defend the crown. However, if one athlete or team is able to fend off all the challengers and win the championship multiple times successfully, we may start to yearn for a challenger that is able to dethrone the champion. There may even be some people who will begin to believe that the reason behind the champion's success is due to money (for team sports) or performance-enhancing substance (for individuals) rather than good management or training. In extreme cases, they may start to believe that there is a conspiracy behind their favourite athlete/team's results. While there are many cases where this is true (Ben Johnson and Chelsea of the EPL comes to mind), a lot of these sentiments can be regarded as sour grapes. A team may be able to use its (owner's) wealth acquire the best players, but it won't win anything unless its players are able to play as a cohesive unit (for proof, look at the New York Rangers hockey team). While performance enhancing substances may help athletes in some sports, there are some sports where the benefit is not as great — steroids may increase a baseball player's strength, but before something that can improve a player's hand-eye co-ordination is invented, he still needs to rely on his own ability hit to ball (did I said too much there?). As for the conspiracy theory, we all have come up with those at one time or another, but that is usually because we can't bear to accept that our favorite athlete/team has performed badly.
Most of us want people who are famous to be people whose behaviour can be emulated. This includes athletes. Strangely, many sports fans don't want athletes to be too "clean cut", either. We want them to have personality flaws that we can look down on. On one hand, we want the athletes to be "perfect" because we want our sporting heroes to be people who behave well on and off the field, someone who is worthy of our devotion. On the other hand, since the athletes are superior to us athletically (and often financially), we want them to have flaws so that we can feel better about ourselves, that we are better than them in some way.
While many fans constantly look for flaws in athletes, we can be very forgiving as well. We often overlook the mistakes our favourite athlete makes, as long as he/she performs well. When our favourite athlete/team performs badly, we come up with reasons to defend the performance and to shift the blame elsewhere. Many fans defend an athlete when he/she makes a mistake or misspeaks. In some ways, fans are the reason why some athletes think that they can say and do as they please.
On a related note, many sports fans want athletes to say something original, but get shocked when an athlete says something other than the usual cliche. This is caused, in part, by the ever-growing sporting coverage and highlight shows. Today there are hundreds of networks and innumerable number of web sites devoted to sports (and growing). We can easily access athletes' pre- and post-game/event comments. After a while, some of the comments become so overused that we plead (silently) the athletes to stop uttering them. Examples include "this game is a must-win," "our backs are against the wall," and, my favourite, "we have to give 110%" (the next time I hear someone utter this phrase, I would like someone to respond with "that's impossible. No one can give more than 100%, by definition that is the most anyone can give" (I got this phrase from The Simpsons). On the other hand, if an athlete makes an original comment, the journalists would snap the quote up and it would be dissected by many and replayed over and over again. Commentators and fans ponder (out loud) whether the comment is needed or not. Some of those comments are well-thought out, but there are some athletes who make a comment just so it appears in print, on TV and over the radio waves. And we fans keep coming back for more. A reason why athletes make outrageous comments is that they know their comments will make headlines and be replayed over and over again.
It is difficult to figure out what do us, the sports fans, really want in general. This is likely due to the fact that different sections of fans often have conflicting demands. It may even be a futile exercise trying to figure out what sports fans really want because sports fans, like many athletes, are always hungry for more — if we get what we want, we will begin to ask for something else (then why did I write the words above? Because in sports, there is always a next time).