Why The Pride – Kevin Wallace

You'd think that as the person nominally in charge of content and communication for The Pride I'd have already written this, but the truth is I haven't been able to put my thoughts down for some time. Why The Pride is a tricky question for me in a lot of ways. But the answer is ultimately community, accountability, and fun. 

An unlikely start

If you want "just the facts" on why The Pride, I joined nearly by accident at the team's very first meet and greet event at Rhinegeist. This was before the inaugural season, and The Pride had a two-person booth selling memberships. And let's be honest, what they were really selling and what I was really buying was a $20 scarf. At that point I was suspicious The Pride was a group started by FC Cincinnati, and I wasn't a fan of that at all. But I joined, enjoyed the event, and didn't really think much about my involvement after that.  

A few months later, I ended up railing against The Pride on Reddit, It was an internet shit-storm for the ages. Heck, Cincinnati Soccer Talk needed to talk about it on episode 23 (good luck finding a link to that one) of the show. The next day I attended a Pride meeting and told everyone I was the guy from Reddit, and I was happy to try to be a part of the solution.

I've always liked my "Pride origin story" because it teaches us a few things. One, I come across as a jerk online, but I'm pretty reasonable in person. Two, The Pride is a welcoming organization at its core that is willing to admit mistakes and invite people in who want to be involved. Three, soccer (and the internet) is very very serious grown-up business. Four, things actually did get better. Things I pushed for in that meeting and even in that Reddit post are now firmly part of FCC culture. I'm not saying I made them happen, but I can say I tried to make them happen. 

Finding a Cincinnati soccer home

That's when I knew The Pride was going to be the group for me. Because up until then, as an American soccer fan in Cincinnati, soccer was something that happened elsewhere. It was a thing you were always observing from afar. You could play the game with some friends in the park, but the sport itself was located away from you. I remember following my favorite player's careers through FIFA releases and seeing the new rosters. Ronaldinho highlight videos, made up of a handful of pixels, were shared on a pre-YouTube internet among the few people I knew in my class that liked soccer. Being able to not only watch the professional game in my hometown, but have a supporter group to belong to, was something I never felt possible before FCC and The Pride. But here we are. 

To me, finding a supporter group was the make-or-break moment to even support FC Cincinnati. Supporter groups, in my opinion, are crucial to making "Sports" work in the first place. A supporter group is a fan union. And I mean that like a labor union. Fans want the team to do well, just like the union wants the company to do well. If the team is terrible, the supporters suffer, like how a company goes bankrupt and the union isn't able to employ their members. But unions also hold the company's feet to the fire. Making sure promises are kept, improvements are made, and the best possible life for their members can be attained. That's a supporters group. That's the key to making this work. 

Active support

Because the supporter groups provide the pageantry, the songs, the smoke, the artwork, the spectacle, by the end of 2016, people were buying tickets to see the fans as much as they were buying tickets to watch FC Cincinnati play Toronto FC 2. Active support, as it is called, provided an amazing atmosphere. Traditions were quickly made, and a culture developed and thrived. And with that, the supporters were able to assert themselves with the club. A lot of quality of life improvements have been made for not just supporters, but for everyone in the stadium.

And, supporters are a good check for the on-field product as well. Maybe it wasn't well received by everyone at the time, but the decision not to hang up banners for a match when FC Cincinnati was in the midst of a terrible run of form in 2020 was a reminder of fan power. The coaching staff and players commented on it after the match. The GM and President of the club invited supporters group leaders to meet to talk about the direction of the team. Those supporter group leaders were able to demand a town hall where the GM explained why the team had a poor season to fans.

Do you think that happens with the Reds? Can you even imagine it happening with the Bengals? 

There is no "Cincinnati sports curse" here. As I see it, there is an apathy and a willingness to roll over for bad teams and poor stewardship of organizations that represent this city and my hometown. While they are (unfortunately in my view) privately owned, sports teams are shared community institutions that measure themselves against other communities. Poor stewardship of these community assets should be met with an appropriate response from that community. That response should never be apathy. There should be an outlet for disappointment that isn't just walking away. Fans should be willing to push back against poor stewardship of their teams. 

A voice for the fans

In fact, in the history of American sports we can see fans taken advantage of because of their inability to organize and put pressure on the owners of their community assets. Relocations, obscene ticket prices, television blackouts, rebrands, and the like are standard fare in American sports. But supporter groups in soccer are the only, tiny, sometimes hopeless, resistance on behalf of the fans. Although you might not know it, in MLS a lot of these same things have happened but fan responses forced changes. That's a supporter's group. That's why I wanted to join The Pride. 

Because I've been in the meetings where Pride members call out FC Cincinnati front office staff to their face and say "this isn't good enough." I've been in meetings where team staff swore at supporters, argued, and adamantly disagreed. But those meetings take place. We're at a point now where the supporter groups in Cincinnati can call a meeting with damn-near anyone working at the club to work on some issue and get things resolved. That's incredible. And we have one of the best fan bases in the country because of that relationship.

That's what makes The Pride special to join. Because it's a group that is inviting to everyone, lets anyone get involved, make their mark, and make their voice be heard. And you might even make a few friends along the way. 

Because it’s fun

Back in my day finding soccer fans was kinda tricky. Having a soccer community in The Pride, I have made a number of friendships which has been something I never thought possible when I was in high school. I think what happens within supporter groups is important, and while I get very sanctimonious about it, it's also a lot of fun. It's fun to talk smack online. It's fun to sing songs and drink beer at games. It's fun to play rec league soccer, paint banners, come up with ways to raise money for charity, travel around the country watching soccer, and hang out with new friends. It's a good time for good reasons.

Community, accountability, and fun: that's why I joined The Pride.