Fandom Enraging Misconception / Sports

• Insinuating that any form of athletic competition is "not a real sport" or its participants are "not real athletes" will almost certainly result in a backlash from fans. Along with motorsports, golf and especially cheerleading tend to be frequent targets.
• Calling a foil, epee, or sabre a "sword" will get you mocked mercilessly among fencers. Getting two of them confused will probably draw a negative response.
• In Australia, confusing Australian Rules Football and Rugby. For that matter, in New South Wales and Queensland, confusing Rugby League and Rugby Union.
• Do not refer to Manchester United as "Man U". This was done by United fans at one time, but it led to a spate of chants by fans of other teams that used it as the first two syllables of "manure".
• Do not get Manchester United mixed up with Manchester City, lest you be forever branded as a noob (or worse, an American). They are completely different teams – bitter rivals in fact – that wear completely different colours and play in completely different stadiums.^note  Manchester United was founded first, two years before Manchester City. United is more popular nationally and internationally (to the point where even Americans have heard of them), but Man City is slightly more popular within the City of Manchester itself.
• Rugby Union doesn't have rules, it has laws. Ignore this when talking to a rugby fan at your peril. The same applies for cricket.
• Refer to any supplement as a steroid in front of a Body Builder, or say they are similar, or say they have a similar use, or say that there is no difference between the two. If that Body Builder doesn't just react with violence, he's sure to go off on a diatribe about why supplements are definitely not steroids.
• If you're going to talk about NASCAR on the air, you should never under any circumstances make the claim that drivers aren't athletes. When Donovan McNabb made the claim on November 15, 2013 that Jimmie Johnson wasn't an athlete, the online fandom exploded. By midnight, the hashtag #PeopleWhoAreMoreOfAnAthleteThanDonovanMcNabb was trending nationally on Twitter, with people using as examples Toronto's semi-deposed^note he legally couldn't be removed from office before his term expired in 2014, but many of his official duties and powers were awarded to his Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly former mayor Rob Ford, or Manti Te'o's fictional girlfriend.
  • When referring to one of the vehicles driven in NASCAR, it should be called a "stock car" ("NASCAR stock car" is also acceptable, albeit a bit redundant). But "a NASCAR" will immediately, pun intended, throw a red flag out at whoever's saying it; the word "car" is represented by only the "C" in the acronym ("National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing")^note Hilariously, at this point calling it "a NASCAR" would probably be more accurate. "Stock car" originally meant taking actual street cars ("dealer stock") and modifying them into race cars. NASCAR slowly got away from that over the years, and now (and in fact ever since the "Car of Tomorrow") the cars you see on the track have nothing in common with anything Toyota, Ford, or Chevrolet offer at their dealerships. "Stock car" is still the preferred term, but realize it's just semantics. If you really want to avoid confusion you could just refer to them as "Cup Series car" and "Xfinity Series car", depending on which series you're watching. On the contrary, the "stock" adjective need not apply to the truck series—just "truck" suffices there.
  • Don't confuse Indy cars with Formula One cars. While Formula One cars have raced at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the past (the Indianapolis 500 itself even counted towards the Formula One World Championship from 1950 to 1960^note The two rarely mixed though, it just didn't make financial sense for the F1 guys to make the trip to the U.S., and the guys that ran in the Indy 500 competed in the American USAC series, not F1. It was only awarded points as a promotional move (which didn't work) and the 500 wasn't run under the FIA regulations that govern F1), and several famous drivers have been successful in both series, the two are headquartered in completely different continents and haven't raced together since the 1960 Indianapolis 500.^note The cars themselves are also quite different, even if they both look more like fighter jets than any car you'd see on the street. Indy cars all use the same chassis and one of 3 spec engines, and are very tightly regulated, whereas F1 cars are all completely designed from the ground up and the regulations are a lot more open (though F1 is beginning to tighten them up.) On the track this means that F1 cars are a lot lighter and faster than Indy cars (to the tune of 10 seconds a lap on some tracks), but also much, much more expensive. One consequence of F1's loose regulations (and the main reason they're starting to crack down) is the severe lack of parity among the teams, to the point that everyone not on the top two or three teams can be completely written off before the season starts.
• The only team you can refer to as "the All Blacks" is the 15-man team that plays in The Rugby Championship, World Cup, and assorted friendly matches. Never refer to the Māori All Blacks^note players must have Māori ancestry equivalent to one great-grandparent to be eligible or the All Blacks Sevens^note they play the shortened version of rugby as "the All Blacks", or assume they are the same.
• Mixed Martial Arts:
  • Calling MMA "Ultimate Fighting". This is like calling basketball "NBA". The Ultimate Fighting Championship is the biggest promotion within the sport, but the sport itself is called "mixed martial arts", and the fighters are called "mixed martial artists" or "MMA fighters", not "Ultimate Fighters". Referring to the sport or fighters as such is an immediate signal to fans to start ignoring you.
    • On a similar note "Cage Fighting" might get a few groans from MMA fans too. Not only it makes the sport sound like an illegal fight club where "two go in and one come out", it's not even accurate! Some promotions, especially in Japan, like to use traditional boxing/kickboxing roped rings instead of a fanced cage.
  • Seeing MMA as a Blood Sport where unskilled street fighters fight without any rules, or God forbid, call it "human cockfighting".
• Don't confuse the New Orleans Saints' chant "Who dat?" with the Cincinnati Bengals' chant "Who dey?"

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