Audio By Carbonatix
If the Miami Dolphins’ 0-3 start to the season has you asking yourself WTF, you’re not alone. According to a new study, while Fins fans may be divided on whether Tua Tagovailoa is the long-term answer at quarterback heading into tonight’s Monday Night Football match-up against the winless New York Jets at Hard Rock Stadium, they’re aligned in their use of foul language and overall negativity toward the franchise they love to hate and hate to love.
Because good, bad, or ugly, cursing is the peanut butter to a strong sports team’s jelly.
That, at least, is the science behind a new analysis from the sports gambling website Vegas Insider, which has shed light on which fan bases are the most negative and foul-mouthed online. According to the data, just as the Dolphins have been for the past four decades in everything else, they found themselves in the middle of the pack in nearly everything.
Other than being negative, that is. If there were a title for that, Phins fans would compete for a championship every goddamn season.
Phins Fans: By the Numbers
The study examined more than 1.2 million comments across all 32 NFL fan subreddits, with at least 15,000 comments analyzed per team. In total, 158,534 swear words were recorded, with each comment categorized as negative, positive, or neutral.
Surprisingly, compared to many other fan bases, Phins fans don’t curse all that much.
Unsurprisingly, few fan bases are more nihilistic.
Here’s what the data suggests: In the case of Dolphins fans, 25.64 percent of the comments were deemed “negative,” the seventh most in the entire NFL. Meanwhile, 30.21 percent were labeled “neutral” and 44.15 percent were positive.
In total, out of all the long, drawn-out message-board posts that the robot read — as much as one wishes the task fell to some poor intern, you know it was AI — there were 6,815 negative comments, 8,032 neutral comments, and 11,737 positive comments from the 26,584 analyzed.
For the sake of comparison, the Cincinnati Bengals’ fandom turned out to be the most “negative,” with 28.48 percent of their comments expressing a negative sentiment. But with their Pro Bowl quarterback Joe Burrow likely to miss the season with a foot injury, can you blame them?
Negative — But Classy!
With all that negativity, you’d assume there would be an elite level of s-words, f-words, and m’fers mixed in. Sadly, you’d be wrong. And if that bothers you, maybe you should log in and be the change you want to see in the science.
The data suggests that Dolphins fans rank 20th among NFL fan bases in earmuff-worthy words. For instance, of the 1.2 million overall comments studied, a mere 537 contained a Dolphins fan deploying the word shit. (Which, if we’re being honest, is oddly disappointing, given the product on the field of late.)
Leaguewide, Vegas Insider found that the Indianapolis Colts had the most foul-mouthed fan base, with 16.4 percent of their subreddit comments containing profanity, followed closely by the Cincinnati Bengals (15.9 percent) and the Dallas Cowboys (15.3 percent).
On the other hand, the Los Angeles Chargers were deemed the least potty-mouthed fan base, with only 10.9 percent of comments containing swear words. The Buffalo Bills and Houston Texans rounded out the top three most polite fan bases, with profanity showing up in just 11 percent and 11.1 percent of their comments, respectively.
So, there you have it. Dolphins fans have apparently become so resigned to a destiny of never winning a playoff game again that they’re not even willing to dip into their daily quota of online curse words to express their anger. But, we’d like to see the study updated if they manage to lose to the 0-3 Jets.
