1. Introduction
[1.1] "Did you see the news???" came the text midmorning on a lazy October Saturday. The query was from John, a friend from Winnipeg with whom I share a perpetual, sport-themed text conversation. And he was not sharing information new to me. For the past four hours, in fact, I had read news reports, watched and read social media commentary, consumed Reddit threads, and already called my father with the news—an injury to high-priced quarterback Carson Wentz was about to thrust Taylor Heinicke back into the starting role for the Washington Commanders. I was about to begin hours of daily content consumption on an array of legacy and social media platforms because Taylor Heinicke fandom is a true passion of mine.
[1.2] Given the size and scope of professional and collegiate sport in North America, my avid fandom is far from noteworthy. The industry is driven by the passion of its ardent supporters, who purchase tickets, acquire merchandise, and view the contests to the degree that sport has been called the last "appointment" television (Crupi 2022). As a follower of sport, I have felt the seduction of fandom, but two things have allowed me to retain some critical distance. First, my original academic training was as a journalist. As a high schooler, I aspired to cover the Toronto Blue Jays for the Toronto Star. Although I left journalism more than fifteen years ago, I have found it hard to shake the no-cheering-in-the-press-box maxim. Leaving journalism for academia, I maintained my interest in sport. My research largely has looked at sport through a sociological lens. As such, my own observer's perspective of on-field contests has been maintained, even enhanced. Sport sociology scholarship is quick to identify ethical blind spots and excesses that exist within sport, from toxic behavior by fans in person or online (Stanfill 2020), to problematic public policy decisions around stadium funding (Noll and Zimbalist 2011), to the negative byproducts of large event hosting (Zimbalist 2020), to physical risks posed by sports like my favorites, football and hockey (Malcolm 2018). However, nothing in my training has been able to prevent me from losing all critical distance when it comes to Taylor Heinicke. This article, which follows my rollercoaster experience as a Taylor Heinicke enthusiast during the 2022 National Football League (NFL) season, is an effort to unpack why this occurred.
[1.3] It is intuitive that scholars of sport fandom have examined the popular phenomena through myriad disciplines and from a range of theoretical perspectives (Pegoraro 2013; Reysen and Branscombe 2010; Wann and James 2018). Studies have examined the behaviors of fans themselves (Dwyer et al. 2015; Melnick and Wann 2011) as well as the social (Wann et al. 2001), economic (Quinn 2014), and cultural (Doidge at al. 2019) impact of their passion. Daniel Wann, a preeminent American sport fan scholar, noted in a podcast sponsored by the American Psychological Association that at its best, fandom adds value to the sport consumption experience, promoting basic psychological needs of belonging, esteem, and collective identity (quoted in Mills n.d.). The collective corpus of this scholarship provides multiple rationales for and suggests tangible outcomes of sport fandom. However, there has been far less exploration and articulation of these phenomena from the perspective of sport fans themselves. Grant Farred (2002) examined the notion of passionate Liverpool Football Club fandom from inside South Africa's apartheid state. The parasocial relationship between Formula One drivers and their fans was studied through an ethnographic lens by Damion Sturm (2011). There is still room in the scholarly landscape for further exploration of these phenomena by sport fans themselves, however, because of the outsized role that personal fandoms play in the portrayal of popular sport and the unique insight a scholar-fan can bring to the popular avocation. I wanted to interrogate my own experience as a fan through an academic lens because the perspective lent to the process of fandom simply could not be replicated as an outside observer, just as a psychologist cannot effectively help their clients without attempting to mindfully occupy their mental states.
[1.4] There were clues in my own narrative and biography to suggest that I would root for Taylor Heinicke. I closely follow sport both personally and professionally. Heinicke played football at my alma mater and academic home, Old Dominion University (ODU). As a small, slender freshman, he immediately became a star for their new (circa 2009) football program, leading the team to the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs two years in a row. His final two years at ODU, Heinicke played like the Lone Ranger, performing strongly on the field against faster, more athletic competition. In fact, Heinicke's on-field success strongly contributed to ODU's invitation to play at college football's highest level, the Football Bowl Subdivision.
[1.5] Undrafted, Heinicke spent five years popping up on NFL team rosters in Minnesota, Houston, New England, and Carolina, almost never playing. He looked to be out of the league for good—living at his sister's house in Georgia and completing his final semester of engineering classes at ODU—when the Washington Commanders called, needing an emergency quarterback during the 2020 season because of the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic posed to keeping rosters healthy (Beaton 2021). Inexplicably, Heinicke went from fourth string to starting in the playoffs for the Commanders, against six-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady. The Commanders lost, but Heinicke acquitted himself capably. A shirt with the caption "The Legend of Taylor Heinicke" memorialized his improbable touchdown scramble from the game. Heinicke earned a backup quarterback contract with Washington for the following season.
[1.6] In the 2021 season, the backup became the starter in Week 1, when Heinicke was pressed into duty by an injury to Ryan Fitzpatrick. He played the entire season for Washington, save for one late-season game when he also was out because of COVID-19. Despite a middling record as a starter (7–8) and uneven performance on the field, Heinicke developed an avid following (including this author) because of his small stature and fearless playing style. An NFL scout referred to him as "[Jackass star] Johnny Knoxville playing quarterback" (quoted in Mays and Tice 2022). My dad in Canada, who became a proxy Taylor Heinicke fan, told me on the phone during one of our weekly Monday debriefs that "anything can happen any time Heinicke snaps the ball…good or bad."
[1.7] Still, athletes becoming cult figures isn't new, either. From Tim Tebow to Jeremy Lin to Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, athletes have achieved momentary (or lasting) fame because of their quirky nature or the force of their personality (Leonard 2014; Myers 2013). I have typically been skeptical about athletes around whom a cult of personality has formed. Not with Heinicke. I consciously eschewed opportunities to find out information that might debunk the legend of Taylor Heinicke. Despite sharing a campus with Heinicke for four years, I never interacted with him, and easily could have. I pushed from my mind the fact that Heinicke quietly deleted a Twitter (now X) account of pro-Donald Trump commentary when he signed his Commanders' contract (Barna 2021).
[1.8] When word circulated that Heinicke would be Washington's starter following the Carson Wentz injury, beginning with a game against his childhood favorite Green Bay Packers, I started a digital journal of my experience rooting for Taylor Heinicke, exploring why he became such a sporting hero to me. For this article, I sought to transpose those reflections on noteworthy sport fan scholarship, seeking a possible explanation for my fan avocation. Despite a life of fandom, examining fandom as a sociological phenomenon was completely new to me. Through mindful consideration—both in the moment and retrospectively—of the array of emotions I experienced and assorted fan rituals that I developed, I ended up gaining real insight into the ways fandom can bleed over into everyday life. This is not a complaint; it was a memorable fall. My inquiry was guided by a single research question: Why did Taylor Heinicke playing NFL football transform me into a fan to a greater degree than a lifetime of following sport avidly had ever done before?
2. Sport fandom literature
[2.1] I was struck by the industry that sport scholars have demonstrated through their research when I began my literature review. But I did not start the process of analyzing fandom, and particularly sport fandom, scholarship until after compiling my 2022 season diary. This retrospective approach helped in two ways: (1) the sheer quantity of fan studies approaches in scholarly literature (which I have since reviewed) could have paralyzed my diary collection process through over-reflection, and (2) the literature itself was far easier to contextualize against my diary findings than in the abstract. The novelty of much of the research—and there have been truly creative approaches taken by sport fandom scholars—yielded a handful of "aha!" moments when my own experience was reflected in the work of others.
[2.2] Because autoethnography was also new to me, it felt important to review literature about the approach itself. Growing out of the earliest form of qualitative inquiry (Patton 2002), ethnography or the study of "others," David Hayano (1979) is credited with originating the term to describe studies by anthropologists of their own cultures. Ellis and Bochner suggested autoethnography displays multiple layers of consciousness, "connecting the personal to the cultural…exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations" (2000, 739). The approach has proven enticing to scholarly researchers because it synthesizes several forms of qualitative inquiry, from narrative research, to autobiography, to ethnography, to other forms of cultural artifact analysis (Cooper and Lilyea 2022). Provided researchers write with their authentic voice and ensure validity of their findings through a logical, systematic methodology (Forber-Pratt 2015), this approach has been deemed acceptable to the scholarly research community. Norman Denzin, in his "call to arms" for qualitative inquiry (2010), makes a particularly passionate case for ethnography and other forms of emergent qualitative methodology, arguing researchers must try to define themselves as a global community by deducing their own evaluation methods.
[2.3] Fan studies scholars have suggested that autoethnography is an effective way to assess and amplify their research subjects' voices about their passions (Sturm 2011, 2015). Because fan studies grew out of fandom (or from cultural criticism), an ethnographic approach has long been a favored methodology of scholars in the discipline (Evans and Stasi 2014), and a natural byproduct of that has been to turn that lens inward. Milena Popova (2020) suggested an autoethnographic approach to address the challenges of studying a fan community that contains the author and whose activity exists in abundance in digital spaces. Moreover, she stated "navigating their way around the digital fannish landscape becomes a key tool for field site construction" (¶ 4.1). In sport, ethnographic exploration allows for portrayals of sport scholarship to move beyond "caricatured sub-cultural models and restrictive typologies" that are prevalent in mass media portrayals of sport fans (Crawford 2003). Also, Richards et al. (2022) argue that ethnography's "thick description" (88) allows for a researcher's observations of behaviors, even their own, to be placed in a broader interpretive context. Osborne and Coombs (2013) spent three years observing NFL fans in public settings, convinced that traditional social identity–based categorization of sport fans did not unpack the collective viewing experience sufficiently. Their Performative Sport Fandom theory argues that individuals become sport fans through socially constructed performances and are based on context and audience. While exhaustive in scope, the study was still, ultimately, an analysis of others (the sport fans they were observing).
[2.4] This consideration of positionality when studying fan phenomena led me to Matt Hills and his influential and widely cited monograph Fan Cultures (2003). His work introduced me to the concept of acafandom—academic study of a cultural artifact from the orientation of being a fan. As Hills writes, "Fandom is always performative…Claiming the status as a 'fan' may, in certain contexts, provide a cultural space for types of knowledge and attachment" (2). Peers of Hills in fan culture studies make similar arguments. Alexander Doty (2002) asks "Why shouldn't readers know something about an [academic's] personal and cultural background and training…The result of a couple of decades of ignoring…investments in our academic writing has squeezed much of the life out of it" (13–14). The acafandom framework has been applied to study varied fan communities, from Eurovision (Hay and Carniel 2022) to David Bowie (Cinque 2020) and romance novels (Roach 2016). Cristofari and Guitton (2017) suggest that autoethnography is the ideal methodology to unpack meaning through acafandom. Autoethnography, they argue, "relies on observations academics can make of their own situation; thus, an aca-fan could opt to study themselves as a fan" (718). Curiously, the abiding passion of sport fans has not resulted in the generation of a great deal of acafandom scholarship connected to the field of play. Aside from Farred (2002) and Sturm (2011), only a discussion of professional wrestling by three fan studies scholars (Litherland et al. 2021) has suggested acafandom as a point of entry into studying sport, positing that attending a professional wrestling event as a fan can provide not only the methodological cover of in-person observations but also actual cover (placing the researcher covertly among fans inside the event). "You might be at a wrestling event because you're going to write about it at some point, but at the same time, you're also enjoying yourself in a social setting" (222).
[2.5] In other areas of fandom, sport scholars have been very busy. A popular press book by former Sports Illustrated senior writer George Dohrmann (2018) contained a chapter about the annual gathering of sport fan researchers in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The chapter focuses on Daniel Wann, who has been studying sport fans as a social psychologist since his doctoral program at Kansas University, where he did his foundational work on the Sport Spectator Identification Scale (Wann and Branscombe 1993). Wann's work on the identity of sport fans has resulted in the generation of more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, and he has coauthored the book Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Fandom (Wann and James 2018). Sport fan research has explored myriad motivations. Studies (Brown-Devlin et al. 2018; Wann and Branscombe 1990) have analyzed the tendency for fans to claim ownership of their team or athlete's successes while eschewing failures, a process known as BIRGing and CORFing—basking in reflected glory and cutting off reflective failure, respectively. Significant scholarship has examined the role that rivalry plays in driving fan passion (Havard 2020; Havard et al. 2016). Popular theories from the social sciences such as Social Identity Theory (Hirshon 2020), Uses and Gratifications Theory (Kim 2013), and Symbolic Interactionism (Slavich et al. 2018) have been used to try to ascribe meaning to the words and actions of sport fans. The passion of the researchers as fans themselves was apparent in their reactions to televised college basketball Final Four games (Dorhmann 2018). However, the perspective of the fan-researcher is largely absent in sport fan scholarship, which was interesting to me. I submit that by turning the lens inward—by immersing myself (joyfully, as was the case for me) in the fan experience—I was able to extract real insight about how engagement to such a degree modulated my experience of Heinicke fandom. Curiously, these insights (and the accompanying emotions) were every bit as pronounced a full year later, when I wrote my retrospective diary.
[2.6] Publications focused on fan studies have featured a generous amount of sport-themed scholarship (Farred 2002; Sturm 2011, 2015), in part because of the potential for performative fandom in person and (especially) through mediated communication channels (Crawford 2003). Other novel approaches to studying sport fandom include creating a crudely drawn cartoon avatar to model healthy sport rivalry behavior (Havard 2019), analyzing European football's rich potential for fan fiction source material (Waysdorf 2015), and the power of sport symbols to create shared identity, such as the connection of fans from Sweden to Liverpool Football Club through the team's fan anthem (Hellqvist 2022).
[2.7] As examples of sport scholarship from the position of fans, Larena Hoeber and Shannon Kerwin (2013) examined their own experience as female fans in a male-dominated sport landscape, negotiating their definition of being sport fans, yet outsiders in the sport fan world. As a curious byproduct, that led to the scholars marginalizing other female fans in the process. Through an autoethnography of his soccer (football) fandom, Keith D. Parry (2012) argued that it is important to use this methodology to generate a greater understanding of sports fans. As a sport scholar, Parry understands what is happening to him when he follows his beloved Liverpool Football Club. "Through my academic study I am aware of both the beneficial and detrimental effects that following a sports team can have on an individual and have begun to look for these signs in my own life" (238). I hear echoes of my own Taylor Heinicke fandom in this statement.
[2.8] Ten years ago, Evans and Stasi (2014) challenged the fan studies community to provide a rationale for their methodological approaches, so the growing body of scholarship can have resonance beyond the narrow field of fandom being studied. Given my familiarity with the Heinicke discourse online and clear self-identification as an enthusiastic fan, a retrospective autoethnography using an acafandom framework can help explain and situate my own emotions connected to this niche subcommunity of NFL fans. This can, in turn, provide insight into the fan experience, articulating how deconstructing the emotional highs and lows (which existed in abundance with Taylor Heinicke playing quarterback) can help explain my sport fan experience from the inside. Armed with new insight about the theories that underpin fandom, I revisited my disorganized notes, social media posts, text messages, WhatsApp chats, and online bookmarks for clues to why this player, in this environment, accelerated my fandom to such an extreme degree.
3. Taylor Heinicke fan diary—2022 season
[3.1] Launching suddenly into a mission to journal my experience as a Taylor Heinicke fan, I made my goals not only to keep a record of the Washington Commanders' season but also to note how my fandom was shaped by my fixation on their quarterback. As I journaled for the remainder of the season (kept an online, multimedia scrapbook is more accurate), I considered the season a kind of time capsule. Even Taylor Heinicke devotees, of which I learned there were quite a few, are aware of his limitations as a professional quarterback. An NFL talent scout would assess Taylor Heinicke as a marginal, at best, quarterback prospect. Heinicke is small. His passes are not accurate. He makes questionable decisions on the field. His attributes make him almost the opposite of what a team would like in a so-called franchise quarterback. That made his unlikely second season as a starting NFL quarterback more compelling to me.
[3.2] I noticed during his first game, against his childhood favorite team, the Green Bay Packers, that my viewership of Heinicke's games followed a specific ritual. If watching at home (my strong preference), I stood when the Commanders were on offense, eyes fixed on the television for every snap. My journalism conditioning suppressing outward reactions meant vocal outbursts were infrequent. According to my spouse, though, my face reddened, my breath accelerated, and a protocol emerged in our household: Do not ask anything when Washington has the ball.
[3.3] Reflecting back on my in-game experience watching Taylor Heinicke, I noted that when the Commanders were on defense, my viewing patterns changed. Since fandom has evolved to include the second screen phenomenon (Nee and Dozier 2017), I considered my actions engaging with social media texts simultaneously while watching the game. Online material, especially social media posts, significantly augmented my Taylor Heinicke fan immersion, and not always positively. Through the week, I found and consumed content by searching his name on X, Reddit, YouTube, and Google News. During the games, those searches would yield rapid-fire reactions, with the lack of understatement typical of many sport fans. I added very little to the social media discourse personally—just an occasional light-hearted joke. However, my reaction to others' content was not nearly as restrained. The immediacy of mostly reverse-chronological social media posts (on Reddit and X, particularly) meant that instant, exaggerated reactions to Heinicke's performance flooded my social media timeline. And though I am an avid second-screen sport fan, this discourse did not add to my enjoyment of the Taylor Heinicke experience. I found myself nodding in agreement with the posts cheering his successes but getting viscerally, disproportionately angry at his critics, particularly the ones commenting on my hero with dismissive smugness. My "ownership" of Taylor Heinicke fandom armed me with defensiveness about criticism over his play. I would think to myself, "Look, I know that play was bad, but shut up!" For this game, at least, the good cheer fortunately far outweighed the online critique. Washington came from behind to defeat Green Bay 23–21.
[3.4] With another come-from-behind win the following week over the Indianapolis Colts, I noticed that my Taylor Heinicke fandom had become communal. My Winnipeg friend John sent several concerned texts as the game appeared to be slipping away from the Commanders. When the comeback was secured, the WhatsApp chat I share with my childhood friends was filled with congratulations, as if I was out on the field. "The kid's a winner," one friend wrote. I beamed. In a long conversation with my dad the next day, my enthusiasm overflowed. I had spent several hours consuming Taylor Heinicke content on traditional news and social media channels. My mood was unquestionably buoyed by the unlikely victory. I have friends and social media connections in my life who outwardly display such volatility over the results of their team's games. For the first time, though I was not expressing these emotions in public forums, I felt similarly fanatical.
[3.5] Fandom includes ups and downs. After some time as a Taylor Heinicke fan, I had developed a sort of radar for when things might go awry. For most of the game against Minnesota the following week, Heinicke courted danger. He completed a long pass against three defenders only because an official collided with one Viking in the middle of the play. Then he paid the price for his recklessness, throwing an ill-advised pass that was intercepted, which sparked Minnesota's comeback victory.
[3.6] After three games starting in the 2022 season—following his role as the starting quarterback for most of the season before—fans' opinions about Taylor Heinicke had hardened. And following this result, and Heinicke's critical mistake, his critics flooded social media platforms. They brought receipts—video clips of Heinicke missing open receivers and throwing to ones that were covered, or examples of him not having the physical attributes to start as quarterback in the NFL. There was also a real edge to their comments. They referred derisively to fans of the player as the "Heinicke Hive," suggesting that they were the fans providing the realistic assessment. It felt personal. It made me, surprisingly, quite angry. When following Heinicke's Walter Mitty–esque performances, my own default was to enjoy his mistakes as part of the experience of being his fan. His improvisation and questionable decision-making invited catastrophe, so I prepared for it. But when faced with scathing, sarcastic criticism, which subtly aimed to diminish my fan credibility, I became defensive. I was brand-new to Washington fandom, brought to the team by Heinicke. I resented, strongly, the inference that Heinicke's pratfalls rendered my own positionality invalid.
[3.7] I would like to describe a week of my Taylor Heinicke fandom during football season as if an observer was with me at all hours of the day. Because NFL games are between three and four hours in length, that left more than 160 hours until the next time Heinicke would lead the Washington Commanders onto the field and into my living room television. Reflecting on the experience of avid fandom that fall allows me to describe a typical week.
[3.8] Sunday evening: Sleep was always challenging after Washington football games. I would search Taylor Heinicke content until the moment I put down my phone and closed my eyes (disregarding the counsel of every sleep expert) replaying big moments from the game that had recently ended (especially if it resulted in a loss). Monday morning: Reflexively grabbing my phone before even my morning coffee, I would quickly access more fulsome game recaps by legacy media journalists, filled with more of the details I had already memorized. I would also, serially, check the social media accounts of fans who I knew as haters of Heinicke, which had the effect of scratching a mosquito bite—the tiniest bit of relief, followed by more irritation.
[3.9] Tuesday to Friday: Work productivity sagged. Throughout the week, I would continue to check the social media accounts of lead proponents and opponents of him among Washington football fans, and then rewatch or reread media about Heinicke that I enjoyed, including a glowing profile from The Ringer from the season before (Solak 2021). Taylor Heinicke content had become a form of fan comfort food for me. I was clearly spending more time than I ever anticipated consuming content about the Washington quarterback, and digesting material that I know would make me feel good acted as a kind of salve against the worst of the abuse directed at Heinicke and his fans. The personal investment as fan that Sturm (2011) catalogs in his autoethnographic approach to Formula One races felt familiar—my investment in Heinicke transferred into doubt and worry. Sunday: The morning of gameday, the hopeful fan in me made excitement drown out dread. I recall one time being asked if I wanted to accompany my family to Starbucks. I declined, indicating that I needed to "walk around the house pumping my fists." Embarrassingly, this wasn't the caricatured (Crawford 2003), performative (Hills 2003; Osborne and Coombs 2013) fandom that has been noted in scholarship. My overheated reactions were impulsive, and—while I was aware of their silliness during my increasingly complex fan rituals—I was powerless to stop them.
[3.10] Following an unexpected win over the undefeated Philadelphia Eagles in mid-November, which I watched from my hotel room in Dallas as I was attending a conference, I noticed a considerable change in the discourse about Heinicke. Since Washington's victory over Philadelphia happened during Monday Night Football, the traditional single game broadcast on the first evening of the work week, discussion of the game dominated mainstream national sports media. Therefore, the social media commentary by fans and critics was framed by that glowing coverage. National media commentators may provoke fans' opinions, but they also play a role in setting the tone of discourse, and for this week at least, it was overwhelmingly pro-Heinicke. By this point of the season, I knew how to find Heinicke's most ardent critics on social media. I made a point of visiting their feeds, hoping to read some humble pie being consumed. I was disappointed.
[3.11] Washington defeated Houston six days after their Philadelphia upset, earning Heinicke confirmation as Washington's starting quarterback. However, my focus was largely on the following week. At my insistence, my family, my brother-in-law's family, and my in-laws drove to Landover, Maryland to watch the Commanders play live at FedEx Field. It would be my first time watching Heinicke in person since his final year at ODU. I was vibrating with excitement. Wearing my "Legend of Taylor Heinicke" shirt, I marched around the parking lot, and then the stadium concourses, making fan-focused small talk with anyone I could. The Commanders defeated the Falcons with a defensive stop on the final play. Heinicke threw two touchdowns, and his entirely predictable, awful interception.
[3.12] I found Heinicke fandom, surprisingly, to be less compelling in person. It might have been the foul weather, but I found I missed the online banter with friends and fans (internet access was essentially nonexistent in the stadium). I missed instant replay and announcers sharing praise of Heinicke's good plays. The fans' roar at his first touchdown throw was exhilarating, but by the second half, I found myself missing my couch. Despite the real threat of it degrading my experience, the accessibility of fan content on the internet is such a powerful draw. With live football, the stimulus is present in abundance, but the social connection is not. It feels, somehow, lonelier. Osborne and Coombs (2013) deftly analyzed the performative nature of sport fandom. But what if there is no audience? I was at the Commanders' stadium with thousands of fans, but the amplification mechanisms for my own rituals were unavailable because stadiums have not figured out how to deploy 4 or 5G internet access. Unexpectedly, I had begun to personify Rowe's (2014) connected sports fan, where real-time consumption of games becomes a sport, although my own Heinicke fandom felt personal rather than performative.
[3.13] Four weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Washington played its latest most important game of the season, and I was once again away from my couch. This time, so far away that viewing the game against the San Francisco 49ers was impossible; I was in Panama with my extended Canadian family for a Christmas holiday. Away from the relentless flow of social media Heinicke content (in part because of my own motivation to be present with my family on vacation), I followed the game through written play-by-play descriptions on the ESPN app. This made me feel dislocated from the emotional highs and lows of Heinicke fandom, yet a sense of dread hung over the event. Washington coach Ron Rivera had indicated that success or failure in the game could be a factor in Heinicke continuing to serve as Washington's starter. Line by line on the ESPN app, I followed the game, constantly refreshing my rapidly decharging phone. Washington was losing, in part because of a Heinicke fumble and interception. The next ESPN update made my heart sink. On the first down, a pass was completed to Washington's Curtis Samuel…by Carson Wentz. Heinicke had been benched.
[3.14] Wentz had played well enough that he was reinserted as the Commanders' starting quarterback. My motivation to follow the rituals of my Heinicke fandom had sagged, because of my own disappointment but mostly because I couldn't stand to read told-you-sos from the large, vocal contingent of anti-Heinicke Washington fans. The Cleveland game turned into a disaster for Wentz, who threw three interceptions leading to a loss. Even though I had become a Washington fan only because of Heinicke, I was genuinely disappointed with the outcome. My investment in Heinicke began as a let's-see-what-happens rollercoaster but through a season of hopeful games and results had morphed into a real stake in the team's success. Through Taylor Heinicke, all things were possible for the Washington Commanders—or so I hoped.
[3.15] Following the 2022 season—which was full of drama for every Washington fan but breathtaking for fans invested in Taylor Heinicke—there was a sense that the experience could not be replicated for a third season. His quarterbacking story consumed far less of my daily recreational thoughts. I still searched his name on social media platforms. I watched every interview when Heinicke appeared at Super Bowl Media Day. But I could feel my own investment diminishing. Heinicke signed with the Atlanta Falcons to back up young starter Desmond Ridder. During the 2023 season, I watched Falcons games if I could (as an out-of-market team, their contests didn't always appear on television). My interest swelled again when Heinicke became Atlanta's starting quarterback after Ridder's poor performances, but his season contained little dramatic flourish; he performed poorly and was returned to the bench after a few games. Following the season, Atlanta signed a new starting quarterback (Kirk Cousins) and drafted his eventual successor (Michael Penix), leading to Heinicke being traded to the Los Angeles Chargers. Recent history suggests that, given his unlikely NFL journey so far, Heinicke could end up on the field for his new team.
[3.16] I am sure accessing as much Taylor Heinicke content as possible will be a reflexive reaction if this happens. With each evolution in Heinicke's tenuous NFL career, I have found myself reminiscing about episodes of my fandom. Teams change, players move through and ultimately finish their careers. But if my past few years are any indication, the memories can act as diversionary signposts in our lives. I created extensive, multimedia notes in assembling a diary of my 2022 Taylor Heinicke fan avocation. But I didn't need the notes. I can recall, instantly, every meaningful moment and the accompanying emotions, nearly two years later.
4. Reflection
[4.1] When writing this article, I found it helpful to wait several months to turn my multimedia notes into reflections of being a Taylor Heinicke fan. I found myself easily recalling every memorable event; the notes were almost superfluous. And with distance came context. I was almost sheepish about how emotional it was to watch Taylor Heinicke play high-stakes games as an NFL quarterback yet feel the emotions months later. My mood fluctuated with his performance. My sleep patterns were negatively affected. My professional productivity fell off a cliff. Being an avid fan is not a unique experience—our money builds concert halls, football stadiums, and theme parks—but it was completely new to me.
[4.2] The acafandom positioning put forward as a research rationale by Hills (2003), Jenkins (2012), Doty (2002), and others suggests that an autoethnographic approach places the academic-fan's investment in their passion under a process of cultural analysis (Hills 2003). This marriage of writing as a fan with autoethnography, suggested as intuitive by Sturm (2015), Popova (2020), and others, has not been overly studied in the field of sport, with only a handful of autoethnographic examinations of sport fandom (Fared 2002; Hoeber and Kerwin 2013; Parry 2012; Sturm 2011). Using an acafandom framework for this autoethnography meant that I was most interested in how Taylor Heinicke playing quarterback and his accompanying successes and failures affected me personally. Following that experience, I reflected about the season but also looked at fan studies literature for cues about why I became so invested. I yelled at my phone while reading throwaway commentary by football fans I had never met. And it wasn't Taylor Heinicke's semiregular goofs that made me upset—it was fans' reactions to those mishaps. The Washington football fan group split, and the divisions became increasingly hostile, fueled by social media's interactivity, anonymity, and ubiquity. It negatively affected my fan experience.
[4.3] However, I missed it when I was away from the screen that frequently made me mad—such as watching Taylor Heinicke in person. Despite being with 60,000 others, it was a lonelier fan experience. That was because within this online network, my also-in-real-life friends were Taylor Heinicke fans by default. My enthusiastic babbling became fodder for conversation—and teasing, and memes, and jokes. And with social media users whom I had never interacted, Taylor Heinicke content became shorthand for cultural connection. One user I still follow on X creates nothing but posts that lionize Heinicke, frequently to the point of ridiculousness. This user appears to be a giant fan, and his posts reflect whimsical defiance; he doubtless enjoys the angry replies he receives from every Heinicke-themed post long after he left the Commanders. My own insight was internal. My notion of fandom changed through a season of hyper-focus on my sporting hero.
[4.4] That, I think, is my most salient reflection of wasting a great deal of time creating a diary of the time I was devoting as a Taylor Heinicke football fan. If we are going to invest so much of ourselves in fandom, the experience must be a net positive. My free time is relatively scarce. If I am going to invest a large portion of it in a diversion, unless my memories of the experience are positive, I will have truly wasted that time.
[4.5] Studies of fandom have examined performativity in groups (Osborne and Coombs 2013) and in mediated electronic settings (Rowe 2014). It has looked at the collective joys of rooting together (Wann 2022) and the sardonic edge that comes from rooting against rivals (Havard 2020). Sport fandom is, above all, experiential. The raw emotion that can be a byproduct of sporting contests (we'll set aside whether society's priorities are askew) has proven irresistible for ethnographic analysis of the sport fan and their environs (Crawford 2003; Osborne and Coombs 2013; Richards et al. 2022). Like a few other scholars (Farred 2002; Hoeber and Kerwin 2013; Litherland et al. 2021; Parry 2012), my primary object of study was my own fandom. And my insight about being an exuberant Taylor Heinicke fan is that it allowed me, over a few dozen football weekends, to suspend my self-aware reserve and root passionately, living and dying with every play by my hero in a way that I had never done before. It felt primal. It felt cathartic. I don't regret one second of the personal investment. I know that years from now, I will reminisce fondly about my season journaling about Taylor Heinicke quarterbacking the Washington Commanders in the way my father-in-law talks about the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. This was a moment in time that I will treasure.