A fan's lament.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS BIZ

On Jan. 4, 1987, the Denver Broncos hosted a playoff game against the New England Patriots, whose quarterback, Tony Eason, had guided the team to an 11-5 record. The Patriots were a good team with offensive balance, and as the game entered the fourth quarter, the Broncos were guarding a tenuous three-point lead and the crowd at Mile High Stadium was at full alert, roaring to life as the Patriots emerged from every huddle.

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With one minute and 37 seconds left, the Broncos pinned the Patriots to the 10-yard line following a punt, and a defining moment loomed. It would turn out to be one of 10 or 15 signature plays in the Broncos' history, and it seemed to last forever: Eason, desperately scanning for an available receiver, stepping to his left, his offensive line unable to ward off a devious ballet of stunting and deception by the Denver linebackers.

He never got the pass off. Eason simply disappeared. He was there one moment and gone the next, buried in the end zone under the shoulder pads of Denver lineman Rulon Jones, sacked for a safety that ended the game as convincingly as a bullet striking its target. The eruption from the crowd was magnificent: one of those communal moments of joy shared by thousands of delirious fanatics. In section 313 of the old stadium, I was one of them.

What the Broncos faithful experienced that day was something approaching euphoria, and it is the strongest psychological payoff attainable for the marathon of suffering and time that is the necessary stuff of being a fan. There are all sorts of theories about what bonds people to teams populated by players most fans will never meet. At the intellectual zenith currently is the idea from Stanford literature professor Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht that being a fan has something to do with sublimation.

In his book "In Praise of Athletic Beauty," Gumbrecht suggests fans willfully surrender to an aesthetic experience they cannot find except on a Sunday afternoon at a football stadium.

Understanding the nature of fans is important because it underpins the economic firmament of modern sport, which in the case of the National Football League has yielded a cash machine accounting for $6 billion a year from TV rights, ticket sales, merchandise, concessions, suite rentals and more. In his recent book, "Tailgating, Sacks and Salary Caps," Wall Street Journal reporter Mark Yost explains that a commitment to the health of the collective has kept NFL team owners...