NFL columnist has 1 word to describe Tennessee Titans fans. It's not exactly a compliment
USA TODAY NFL columnist Mike Freeman has one word to describe Tennessee Titans fans. It's not "terrific." It's not "passionate" or "underrated" or even a backhanded compliment like "country-fried."
It's "meh."
Meh. The way you describe a fast-food cheeseburger or a three-day business trip to a midsized city in the Rust Belt. The onomatopoeia usually reserved for questions like "Are you excited to paint the garage?" and "How close are you with your second cousins?"
And it's not like this description came in an article with the headline "One word that describes every NFL team's fans." The Titans landed in Tier 7 in Freeman's rankings of every NFL fanbase, putting Titans fans somewhere between the 19th and 22nd best in the league alongside the Jacksonville Jaguars, Miami Dolphins and Chicago Bears.
The Jaguars got a whole paragraph to justify being in Tier 7. Bears quarterback Justin Fields got a shoutout. Dolphins fans got to take another victory lap in the form of a reminder about the undefeated 1972 team. The Titans? Just meh.
Is 'meh' the best word here?
For the uninitiated, the dictionary definition of meh: As an interjection, an expression of boredom or apathy. As an adjective, unimpressive or boring.
Meh, obviously, is a subjective description. Google "Taylor Swift meh" and you get 1.9 million results. Google "bacon meh" and you get 5.5 million results. Google "Star Wars meh" and you get 9.5 million results. Heck, if you Google "having friends meh," you can find 26.1 million links about why it's unimpressive or boring to know other people.
So yes, there's nothing stopping people on the internet from unleashing hot takes about why they don't like the things other people like. That's not exactly news.
But it also isn't exactly news that the Titans aren't a front-of-mind franchise for people outside Tennessee. Over the last five years, the Titans are the fourth-least-Googled NFL franchise. Almost 7 million people have played the "name every team in the NFL" game on the trivia website Sporcle, where users forget the Titans more than all but four teams. Only one team has a smaller combined following on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok than the Titans.
So by pure brand awareness, meh might be fair. But that's not what Freeman was ranking. He put Kansas City Chiefs fans in last place, and the Chiefs aren't exactly lacking in press coverage or social media discourse. This is about the feeling that Titans fans inspire in people.
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It's hard to know why outsiders feel the way they do about something you're on the inside of. Maybe a couple years of seeing larger fanbases make Nissan Stadium unfriendly confines for the Titans is the culprit. Maybe a lack of primetime games or perennially playing in a less-than-stellar division makes it hard to notice the rabid sides of the Titans fanbase. Or maybe the Titans really just haven't been consistently exciting enough to make people pay attention.
The truth is the Titans ranked 16th in the NFL in average home attendance last season, right in the middle of the league. Titans fans mobilized well enough in 2019 to make it to the finals of a "best fans in the NFL" Twitter bracket, but are small enough that a 2022 study by Samford University statistically argued Titans fans are the least passionate in the NFL.
Matters of opinion are matters of opinion. Different people value different qualities in different ways. One man's great fanbase is bound to be another man's bottom-feeder.
It's a wishy-washy conclusion.
Or, put another way, meh.
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on Twitter @nicksuss.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: NFL columnist sums up Tennessee Titans fans in 1 word: 'Meh'
