ne of the odd quirks of fandom is that, occasionally, a player pops up who polarizes the fan base. And when fans pick a side, they typically dig in without room for any argument to sway them from their position.
We see it most often in football, where the quarterback has so much control over how a team performs — and we saw this to an extreme when Mike Leach was running the Air Raid in Pullman. And what usually happens is, fans see something early in the player’s career, they make up their mind, and everything that comes after is subject to confirmation bias — when the mind gravitates toward evidence that confirms a preexisting conclusion.