Joey Bosa of the Los Angeles Chargers, before he was released by the club. (Photo by Alex … [+] Slitz/Getty Images)

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Sport is only getting stranger. While the nature of following a team is emotive, recent years has seen some getting more interested in the business side of the field. This forces fans to sometimes choose between feeling and finance—something shown by the way many NFL followers reacted to Joey Bosa’s release by the Los Angeles Chargers.

This begs a simple question: has the commercialization of sport forever altered our connection with athletes? Well, let’s try and find out.

Joey Bosa—a 29 year old outside linebacker—was picked by the Chargers in the third round of the 2016 draft. Since then, he became the team’s current longest serving player and, in the eyes of many, a legend of the team. But this week he was released.

Throughout his time at the Los Angeles Chargers (formerly the San Diego Chargers), Joey Bosa the player was selected for five Pro Bowls, with four of those coming in his first six seasons.

In recent years, though, Bosa has struggled, only playing 28 games in the last three seasons.

This piece isn’t about his career though. Instead we want to explore how fandom has evolved into something that considers the business element of running a club. One way we can observe that is through social media.

Many online are making it clear that Joey Bosa is a Chargers legend, with lots of respect paid to his service. What’s more fascinating though is the element of fans who aren’t just applauding his time at the team, but celebrating his departure.

Why? Because Joey Bosa not being part of the club opens up money in the Chargers’ cap space. And this gets to the core of a battle at the middle of modern sports: business versus emotion.

What Joey Bosa Being Released By The Los Angeles Chargers Says About The Nature Of Modern Sports Fandom

There’s an interesting cognitive dissonance going on here. Should fans support the club? Or the players that make up the club?

In some senses, it’s both, but there’s an increasing trend of siding for the corporation of the club more and more against the players—and a big part of this divide can be attributed to the increase commercialization of sports in general.

Research on this topic found a rise in how elite sports teams are acting like businesses, “[prioritizing] financial revenues among organizations and actors.” This can take on an array of different forms, such as sponsorship or moving stadiums, but the key thing here is it shifts a team from being an arm of the community into a corporation.

The paper indicates that it’s the followers of teams and franchises that are most at risk from this move, it stating that “commercialization poses a threat to fans as it may affect many aspects of being a fan.”

To put that another way, acting too much like a business can alienate sports fans from the club they support. This, of course, has been happening for years, but the case of the Chargers releasing Joey Bosa is an interesting angle of how this can impact how fans view parts of the game—especially when it comes to money.

From the club’s perspective, analytically, letting Bosa go makes sense. He’s struggled with injury and earns a lot of money. Getting in new talent is understandable.

But should fans be pushed to feel the same way?

Part of following a team is invoking a sense of tribalism, of growing a unique bonds with the players, where they aren’t just random guys, but people you feel connected to, who you’ve experienced emotions with.

Joey Bosa is a club legend who you could argue was unfairly treated by the Chargers. He even took a pay cut to stay with the team last year. You’d think that this focus on finances over emotion would irritate a lot of fans, but… this hasn’t really happened. Swathes of people online showed respect, rather than outrage. Data prevailed above feeling.

This is part of a fascinating change in elite sports in general. The idea of talking about the finances and the money-saving aspects of sports teams seemed unimaginably far away a couple of decades ago, but now it’s an integral aspect of fandom.

But, in those moments, have we lost something? When we see Joey Bosa cut, one of the Chargers’ greats, and the response is basically saying “good business,” have we lost sight of what makes fandom great? The fact we give ourselves entirely to teams? Strange things happen in sport, but the triumph of money over emotion is not something I was expecting to see.