NFL Fans Are Incredibly Biased, Have Unrealistic Expectations For Their Favorite Teams

The 2015 NFL season gets underway this week, with 32 teams vying for the next Super Bowl championship. But there can only be one winner, and fans of the other 31 teams may take their loss even harder, thanks to lofty expectations and unfounded optimism, according to a new study.

Researchers from Oxford University and University College London asked 1,116 American NFL fans to predict how many games their favorite team would win this season and how many wins their least favorite team would rack up. The researchers explain the average will always be eight games -- there are 16 games and only one winner per matchup -- but the average given by those surveyed was 9.59 wins. There can be ties, as in 2014 between the Carolina Panthers and the Cincinnati Bengals, but the average is still closer to eight than 9.59 wins. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

As for their rivals, fans were pretty realistic with their win totals. There were plenty of New England Patriots haters, but that didn't mean they expect the team to do poorly this season. When it came to Patriots wins for the 2015 season, the margin separating haters from fans was just one game. Other teams, like the Denver Broncos (0.7 win differential), Seattle Seahawks (1.0 win differential) and Philadelphia Eagles (1.1 win differential), saw a similar level of reasonable expectations from anti-fans.

The biggest win differential involved teams with mixed success over the years. The Arizona Cardinals had a great 2014 season (11-5), which followed a 10-win season in 2013. Prior to that, the Cards won five games in 2012, eight in 2011 and five in 2010. "We see the largest optimism gap for lower-profile teams that receive little national media coverage, enabling fans and local media to construct their own optimistic narratives," senior author Brad Love, University College London professor of psychology and language sciences, said in a statement.

The Patriots were simultaneously the most-liked (7.7 percent) and the most-disliked (17.3 percent) team. The Green Bay Packers (7.6 percent), Dallas Cowboys (6.5 percent), New York Giants (6 percent) and a tie between Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks (5.7 percent) rounded out the top five of fan favorites. The Cowboys (13.7 percent), Oakland Raiders (6 percent), Steelers (4.7 percent) and Packers (4.5 percent) rounded out the most-disliked teams.

When that 10-win season becomes a 10-loss disaster, try to relax. There's always next year.