From Save The Crew to Saved The Crew: Constitutive Rhetoric, Myth, and Fan Opposition to Sports Team Relocation

Abstract

Sports franchise relocation is a hallmark of the American sports landscape. Teams relocate at their owners’ whims, leaving fans with little more to do than voice their angst. When the Columbus Crew of Major League Soccer announced in 2017 that ownership was set to move the team to Austin, a group of the Crew’s most ardent supporters initially seemed resigned to the franchise’s predetermined fate. However, over the course of months, those fans embarked on a grass roots campaign that generated attention worldwide and, ultimately, convinced a new ownership group to purchase the team and keep it in Columbus. This paper analyzes the efforts of these supporters through the lens of constitutive rhetoric, an ideologically-based concept that can galvanize disparate communities, shift their collective perspective, and set them on a course for action. In using this approach, the Save The Crew movement used myth to deploy a unique rhetorical power that successfully opposed the powerful capitalist logic of team relocation.