One of the few positives to take from USA’s 2-0 loss to Colombia on Friday came 15 minutes after the final whistle. Despite an anemic performance from the US, the American Outlaws, the team’s most famous supporters’ group, remained behind to sing for the team, in the hope of motivating them for Tuesday’s match against Costa Rica. For the Outlaws, these shows of diehard support are nothing new. They sold out their entire allocation for the Copa América in two days, and brought the largest group of foreign supporters to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. They are the public face of US soccer fandom and, with hype videos like the one produced in conjunction with ESPN for the 2014 World Cup, they act as an increasingly powerful intermediary between the fans, the US soccer federation, and the media. But the Outlaws are going through an identity crisis away from the stands.
The origin story of the American Outlaws is well known. Two USMNT fans, Justin Braunken and Korey Donahoo, who were members of Sam’s Army (the previous dominant American supporters’ group), had traveled to Germany for USA’s opening match against the Czech Republic in the 2006 World Cup. They were looking to attend the Sam’s Army meet-up before the game but the organization’s website provided no help. After a similarly disappointing experience with a tailgate during a friendly in early 2007, they decided to form their own supporters’ group — the American Outlaws. In less than a decade, the Outlaws has grown to 187 chapters nationwide with over 32,000 members. The Outlaws travel to every USA men’s and women’s game, and are usually vocal representatives of their local soccer communities. Perhaps informed by Braunken and Donahoo’s initial frustrations with pre- and postgame festivities, the Outlaws of today stress tailgates, marches to the stadium, and viewing parties as ways of boosting fan engagement.
It was at one of these viewing parties that Tanya Keith, a former president of the AO chapter in Des Moines, Iowa, reported a fellow Outlaw getting inappropriately “touchy-feely” with her after buying her a beer. Keith’s story was one of several incidents of unsavory behavior by Outlaws chronicled in a Fusion article last year on the “growing pains” of the supporters’ group. The story laid out various examples of Outlaws acting boorishly, from rape jokes on AO message boards to racist chanting directed at Mexico fans. These instances, plus the white, male, 20-something demographic of most of the offenders, led to the conclusion that the culture the Outlaws helped to create was being hijacked by frat bros. There was a fear that everything the Outlaws did to ensure supportive and safe environments was in danger of being jeopardized by the jingoistic, beer-guzzling, flag-waving crowd that US sporting events tend to attract regardless.
Davis’s article sent a rumble through the US soccer community. A week after it was published, the Outlaws posted a response on their website entitled “Moving Forward… We Can Do Better” that stated “Any instance of discrimination, racism, sexism, or homophobia is one too many” and redoubled the AO’s commitment to its internal Code of Conduct and “holding members accountable” for their actions. Soon after that, they announced “AO Watch,” a detailed self-policing system aimed at curtailing instances of abuse in their community. AO Watch has been incorporated into the Outlaws system fully, and is advertised before games as well as sent out in every event email.
One of the people who helped to create AO Watch is Dan Wiersema. Wiersema currently serves as the AO’s director of communications and has been a member since 2008, before the Outlaws morphed into the massive community they are today. He said there was a lot of “soul searching” after the Fusion article, and that the leadership had been thinking about these problems and how to address them for some time.
Dan Wiersema told the Guardian he believes the program is working: “We banned a few people for some of their actions, we’ve suspended people’s memberships, we’ve revoked some ticketing with the assistance of US Soccer.
He takes this program seriously and it would be hard to say that he and the rest of the Outlaws leadership are blind and deaf to what is happening within their group. But the AO Watch is a reactive program; it can only address what has already happened. The larger question that Wiersema and others are struggling with is how to change the culture proactively. How can the Outlaws set a tone as an organization from the top down and prevent fires from happening in the first place, instead of spending time and resources trying to put them out?
An example of this might be seen in the Outlaws’ reaction to the puto chant, a tradition among the supporters of some Concacaf teams to bellow out the word whenever the opposing goalkeeper is about to take a kick (puto directly translates to a male prostitute, but it has also been used as a slur against gay men.) Recently the AO published an article saying that they would not be using it, even if they’ve done so in the past, because of its homophobic nature. Wiersema sees this position in keeping with the culture he wants to see the Outlaws promote. “We want to establish a culture of positivity and, for us, the puto chant doesn’t have any other meaning than a homophobic attack … Not only is it offensive — and we have many openly gay members — it’s just not positive.”
This is the crossroads AO finds itself at now. Balancing growth with a strong fan culture is nothing new in US soccer. And with the history of US soccer littered with false dawns and half-baked promises, the AO blossoming can be seen as a rare moment of sustained grassroots momentum. But the Outlaws risk becoming victims of their own success. The raucous chanting, the 90 minutes of singing, and the pageantry of the scarves and the bandanas are all part of the intimidating atmosphere the Outlaws help to provide. But the problem comes when the Outlaws start to intimidate their own members as well as opposing teams. For soccer to really gain a foothold in the US, it needs the type of passionate fan engagement that the Outlaws have made their trademark. And the Outlaws have to create it on their own. They can’t rely upon an entrenched soccer history or culture to build upon. But as they create their future, they have to be cognizant of who is turned on, and who is turned off, by their fan culture.
“We’re not just blips on the radar anymore,” Wiersema says. “We want this to work, we don’t want the American soccer experiment to fail and part of its success comes from doing this right. There’s a right way and there’s a wrong way.” As the Outlaws grow and grow, they are hoping to leave their emergent frat boy image behind.
