In the week 15 thread, Dio said
The thought has crossed my mind - having other teams in your division be successful raises the prestige of your division in general, but I can’t imagine rooting the Steelers or illegitimate entity to have any success. The Bengals I wouldn’t mind terribly, it’s sort of cute when they have flukey good years and all of their fans come out of the woodwork.
This assumes, of course, that their success doesn’t affect your team directly.
I voted yes, but it kinda depends on the circumstance. If the Bears have a straight up crappy season, I’ll root for whoever makes it. If it’s a a bitter race back and forth and we lose the division in the last game to the Packers, I’ll be rooting for them to go down in flames.
I realize that “Yes, it increases the prestige of the division” is too specific. Maybe you vote yes because you are some sort of scumbag who likes several teams in your division or some other reason. If you want to say yes for any reason, just vote for that choice then and explain your reasoning on the thread.
I can understand it in college because prestige of the conference can influence rankings and potential recruits. For the pros, I don’t really see how prestige helps bring in free agents, the schedule or the seeding in the playoffs. What’s the benefit?
I give a big “Meh.”
It varies for me depending on the sport. I’m a Steelers fan and I’d never root for anyone else in the division. However, with college basketball, I’m a Syracuse Orange fan, and I frequently root for other teams in the Big East for prestige of the conference reasons (even after the NCAA tournament has started and I’m no longer worried about the Orange’s strength of schedule rating).
Eagles fan here. I’d actively and vocally root against the Cowboys (as should any fan in the NFL) and I’d do the same against the Giants except that I’d take extra special pleasure in the Giants fans being miserable as well.
The Redskins? I’d probably root for them a little.
Once the Steelers are out of it I root for a team only if I totally despise the other team to a greater degree than the one I’m forced to back. I’ve been fortunate the last few years that such a team has existed (Patriots, Colts and Cardinals, although the ardent Cardinals hate was because they were playing Pittsburgh, I’m mostly indifferent any other time), otherwise the postseason would have no meaning to me.
I wouldn’t root for Cleveland, Cincinnati or Baltimore under any circumstances, except to hope that they lose. 400-0? Try 4000-0. If those teams were in the playoffs or, God forbid, the Super Bowl, I’d want to see them so humiliated that they’d consider folding the franchises after the beating they took. Actually folding would be the fulfillment of a dream beyond comprehension.
I root for pride of the division. Except the Eagles, who I fervently hope will crash land in a mountain range and have to cannibalize each other to survive like that soccer team in South America. They can all rot in hell. They are also an embarassment of failure with zero Superbowl rings in a division where every other team has at least three.
But Cowboys and Redskins, sure, absolutely. Go win one for the East!
Fuck no!
The Cowboys suck. The Eagles suck. The Redskins are inept so I don’t need to worry about them sucking. Basically, if the Giants are out of it, I root for anyone else but an NFC East team.
This gets even worse in baseball. I actively HATE the Braves and I’m none too fond of the Phillies either.
“It depends” – I’m a little bit proud of the Giants’ being part of a great division (when they are), but mostly it’s about the specific teams.
I hate the fucking Eagles. I don’t normally go in for schadenfreude, but one of my all-time football moments was the end of the 2002 NFC Championship Game. It was the last game ever to be played at Veterans Stadium, about which there had been a lot of nostalgia-making in the run-up to the game. Trailing 20-10, the Eagles were driving and had gotten down to the Bucs’ 10 with 3:30 left in the game. They’re making me very nervous now. Thankfully, on the next play Ronde Barber picks off McNabb and runs it back for a touchdown. As he’s crossing the goal line, my phone rings. I know it’s my friend, so I don’t bother with “hello,” but instead answer the phone thusly: “Heheheheheheheheheh – may as well blow up you’re fucking stadium now.”
So, anyway, I hate the Eagles and will never root for them (excepting cases where I want them to play spoiler for another Giants rival).
I dislike the Cowboys, but not severely.
I have no beef with the Redskins. I’m not sure why, but I assume it has something to do with the fact that the Giants have always seemed to get the better of them (unlike the Eagles, who’ve been overachieving against New York since the days of Simms and Parcells). Anyway, I don’t specifically root against them, but nor do I hope they do well for the sake of the division.
The Giants owned the Eagles in the 90s. From 1992-2000, Big Blue went 13-4 against Philadelphia. Remember that playoff game in 2000 when Sehorn made his famous interception? That capped off 9 wins in a row.
I just ran the numbers since 1988, the first year I was old enough to really follow a football season and be invested in it.
In the 366 games in the time span (excluding playoffs), the Giants have a winning percentage of .552 (202-164). Against the Redskins, the Giants have won at a whopping .678 (30-14-1). Against Dallas, we’re at .553, which is slightly better than you should expect given the Cowboys’ overall percentage during that time (.525). Against Philly, however, the Giants are running at .429 (21-28), with two playoff losses.
Probably my hatred of the Eagles has something to do with their winning 9 out of 10 from '88-‘92, the first seasons in which I was a fan. The Giants’ 9-0 run from '97-'00, when the Eagles were (mostly) terrible couldn’t overcome that.
Anyway, my original statement that the Eagles had been “overachieving against New York” is true, but not by as much as I would’ve expected. Since '88 Philly has won 59% of it’s games (excluding playoffs), while beating the Giants 57.1% of the time (*including *playoffs). However, since the Giants have been above average most of that time, we should probably expect Philly’s record against us to be a little worse than it actually is.
No way. It’s anathema. But 400-0 is a little extreme; I’ll take 66-2, or thereabouts.
It’s funny, even though I’m older than you (by a fair bit IIRC), I didn’t become a Giants fan until the summer of 90. By “funny”, I mean that even though I became a fan as the Giants started to own the Eagles, I fucking hate the Eagles more than words can express. Cowboys and Redskins, not so much. Even before Parcells took the edge off my Dallas hatred – and we were in the full-blown “How about them Cowboys” era – my dislike of them was no match for the disgust and contempt in which I hold the Eagles.
Great stats; looks like the reality was somewhere in the middle of both our memories. I trust you included the one playoff win along with those two losses.
As a Browns fan, I said it depends on which rival it is. There are no circumstances in which I could root for the Steelers. The same is pretty much true for the Ravens. I could actually root for the Bengals if they were playing one of a select few teams.
Like a couple of others here, it is different for me between the NFL and college. For college, I’ll root for the conference (SEC) in bowls or in non-conference games, even if it’s one of the big rivals. Heck, I even found myself rooting for Florida a couple of times in recent years and that’s pretty much unfathomable.
But NFL? Fuck 'em. There’s no circumstance where I’d root for one of the division rivals. And when two play against each other I figure the best scenario would be a mutual forfeit, followed by a tie, followed by I guess hoping the home team gets crushed so all those obnoxious fans have a miserable time.
Yeah, the head-to-head numbers include all playoff games, but the overall records since '88 are just regular season (just didn’t feel like taking the time to add up the playoff records).
It’s maybe a little surprising how few playoff matchups the Giants have had with their divisional rivals. Zero playoff games against Washington since the '86 NFC Championship. Unless I’m missing something, the game against Dallas in '07 was the one and only Giants-Cowboys playoff game ever. There have been three playoff games against Philly since '00 (which is a lot), but aside from that there’s been only one other playoff game between the two (in '81) in their 77 years of shared history (obviously for a lot of that time it would have been impossible, but still). And these are teams that have gone to the playoffs an awful lot since '88: Redskins 6 times, Giants 10, Cowboys 12, Eagles 14.
ETA: I wonder if the rivalry dynamics in the division are symmetrical. That is, I’m pretty sure that most Giants fans hate the Eagles first, and I think that the converse is also true (yes?). Are the Cowboys and Redskins a similar paired couple? Or is Philly somewhere in there as well?
NFL.
I’m indifferent. I have no strong feelings one way or the other about the other teams in the NFC West.
MLB.
I’ll root for any NL or AL West team. I fall in the anybody but Yankees/Red Sox/Phillies category.
NHL.
Sure.
Anybody but the Red Wings/Blackhawks/Capitals.
It depends. I’m a Redskins fan first and a fan of whomever is playing the Cowboys second.
My hatred of the Giants fluctuates, but living in the Greater NYC area as I do I’m exposed to their media hype and have occasion to bump into those obnoxious fans that every fan base has, and that will often make me want to see them suffer (the team, not the fans. Well, okay, the fans too).
The Iggles I’m largely neutral about. I don’t actively root for them, but I will if they’re playing Dallas or NYG or one of the other teams I don’t care for. It has nothing to do with prestige of the division though and everything to do with schadenfreude.
In the NHL, it’s a different story. No way. No how. The rest of the Atlantic Division can rot. When they play one another, I don’t root for either team, I root for the roof to collapse.
Not really. General fan tendencies are for Giants to hate the Eagles most, Eagles and Redskins hate the Cowboys most, and if I had to guess for the Cowboys, I’d guess they hate the Redskins the most. Everybody gets a primary hatred in the division except the Giants, but they have the Jets fans for that. heh. Not that division rivals like the Giants in any way, just that they hate other division rivals more.
What Exit? will argue to his dying breath that the Giants primary rivals are the Cowboys despite all evidence to the contrary. In his defense, he cut his teeth on division rivalries in the 70s. (Though you have to wonder if he slept through the Miracle at the Meadowlands.)