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I am a loser. It is really difficult to admit to being a loser, but that’s what I am. Why… because I am a Cubs fan. As many others, I’ve always half joked that being a Cubs fan is kind of a disease, but for me, I think it really is a bona fide psychological disorder. After much of this season’s inspired baseball, I delved deeper into the question of why a team of 25 people who don’t know I even exist, profoundly affect my emotional well being.

I began by looking up the psychology of being a fan, curious to see if there are others outside of Cubdom who take losing so personally. There are only a few studies out there, but I did find some interesting information. I am not going to bore you with a description of social identity theory, but I will mention two phrases that psychologists use in relation to sports fans, BIRG and CORF. BIRG stands for “basking in reflective glory”, that is when a team does well people tend to embrace the success of that team as their own reflected success. You can call them bandwagon jumpers or whatever, but as the saying goes, everybody loves a winner. The opposite of BIRG is CORF, or “cutting off reflective failure.” Since a fan personally identifies with a team as a reflective self, losing creates an unbalanced image of that self. As a coping mechanism, that fan CORFs, or tries to distance themselves from that negative image by disassociating themselves from the team. One noted example of CORFing is for an individual to stop wearing any team affiliated clothing after a big loss and not supporting them until they win again.

I thought about this and where I fit in with this theory. BIRGing is not an issue. I definitely bask in reflective glory when the Cubs win, but then again I always wear my allegiance proudly on my sleeve, regardless of success. My problem comes from the fact that I do not CORF when the team sucks. I compared myself to my antithesis, a White Sox fan. Sox fans are master BIRGers and CORFers, they’re practically prototypes. They, more than any other fan I know, only loves their team when they are winning and complete disassociates from them when they are losing. On the occasion that I have to socially interact with Sox fans, they invariably ask me why I like the Cubs. My usual response is, “If I was the kind of person who stopped liking a team because they sucked, I’d be a Sox fan.”

As stinging as my reply is meant to be, there is a bit of sad jealousy in that statement. If I could CORF, I’d be much happier being a Cubs fan. Since I don’t CORF, what exactly do I do? I mope around the house; I snap at my family; I lose focus at work. I become the embodiment of the Cubs collective failure. (I wasn’t kidding people, I am diseased.) I can fool myself into thinking that being a die hard Cubs fan is a virtue, but it is not, it is a mental illness. So where do I fall in the psychology of sports fandom? What’s the classification? I had to come up with a new term. So, instead of CORFing, I BARF. I “behaviorally adopt reflective failure.” When the Cubs lose, I feel like a loser, I act like a loser.

Unfortunately, I keep gambling my mental health on the idea that some day the Cubs will win it all, and all of my emotional investment into them will pay off in spades. Until then, perhaps I can learn to manage my BARFing. I need to keep my BARFing from controlling my life. I am not my BARF. I am merely a Cubs fan.

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