jjtm writes:
Hello? There may not be any there there, but there certainly isn’t any SF there.
There is certainly no love lost between Oakland and SF fans. Finally, this year Oakland has the better football team, at least until Al moves back to LA. So let me just say ‘Neener neener neener!!’
I think I would prefer the confusion of having two teams to root for than the sense of frustration living in a reasonably large city (DC) that only has two major pro sports teams. (Sorry; I don’t yet count MLS as a major pro sport).
The Redskins are doing pretty well now, and the Cappies are at least hanging in there. But we can’t seem to get an expansion baseball team! We also can’t seem to get an NBA team; this latter problem is undoubtedly complicated by the fact that a group pretending to be a professional NBA team keeps hanging out here.
I guess I’m saying… I’d LOVE to have more teams to root for…
Expanding on the New York issue, fans here mostly root for groups of teams. While there are exceptions, NYers tend to fall into one of two camps:
Yankees, Giants, Knicks, Rangers.
Mets, Jets, Knicks (or Nets), Islanders (or Devils).
Yankess/Mets mostly has become a friendly rivalry and while Yankees fans don’t exactly root for the Mets, we were grateful to see them beat the Bosox in ’86, and a Subway Series would have been a blast (as we’ll prove this year). The Yankees have the history and the better record.
Giant/Jets is also pretty friendly, mostly because it’s been so many years since the Jets mattered. The Giants have the history and the better record, but the Jets have Nameth and (until today) the Giants’ old coach.
No one cares about the Nets. They’re only useful because people can actually afford tickets at the Meadowlands and their games against the Knicks aren’t sold out yet. The Knicks have a history, if not a particularly distinguished one, whereas the Nets don’t beyond Erving.
The Rangers and Devils have a rivalry, but it is based on mutual respect. The Devils and their fans earned this with the Devils’ great play in the ’94 Cup semi-finals and because the Devils fans started with an expansion team and stayed with them and were pretty polite when they got their Cup.
The only reason Rangers and Islanders fans don’t shoot each other on sight is the fear that the other guy is better armed. There is a fight between Rangers and Islander fans at every game between the two, and after all these years, Potvin still sucks.
Jesus saves… Gretzky grabs the rebound… He Scores!
Hm, I sort of think people are overstating the dislike between Giants and A’s fans. I’m a big Giants fan, but have no ill will towards the A’s. I root for them when I catch their games. I went to a Giants/A’s game a while back and while the rivalry definitely existed, it seemed pretty good-natured. To invert what Ursa said, that’s what the Dodgers are for.
49ers/Raiders is an entirely different story, of course. This is because Raider fans are uncouth, brawling nitwits who are so busy bashing the Niners that they haven’t noticed that their team didn’t make the playoffs either.
~Kyla
“You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.”
St. Louis and Chicago obviously aren’t the same city, but their networks overlap, and for many many years they were the only NL teams anywhere near each other. This has led to a rivalry that seems to have flown under the radar to the L.A. and N.Y. media crowd, but believe me, it’s definately there.
My cousin has a shirt, “My favorite team is the Cardinals, and whoever’s playing the Cubs.” My sentiments exactly. This all made for a lively relationship with my grandpa, who was the kind who would even go to the Cub spring training.
Two words, Cubbies: “Lou Brock!” Ha!! Got a lot of use out of Broglio, did you?
And no mentioning Carlton, Philidelphia. I’m here to mock and abuse, not suffer insults myself.
Notice that you hate the ones you know. There’s no big rivalry between the Reds and the Braves, for instance, that I’ve ever heard of. The fans aren’t close enough to argue and learn the good old fashioned hate that is the backbone of modern sport.
sixseatport got it pretty much right about Chicago. I would just add that many Cub fans tend to ignore, rather than actively hate, the Sox (much like an earlier poster noted that Yankee fans tend to ignore the Mets).
The polarization is fairly strict along the north-south divide of the city (which is clearer in geometrically laid-out Chicago than in many other places).
Question #3 is irrelevant. “Assuming maybe everybody’s actually OK with both teams…” It would never happen. Whenever either team makes the playoffs (which happens, oh, once a decade), fans of the other team root like hell for them to lose.