How many people only root for “one” team in football, baseball, etc.?
Well, I admit I root for two teams during baseball season. The New York Mets and… any team that’s not the Yankees.
When my team is in a slump (which they usually are), I like to root for my “backup” team. And when both are losing… I stop watching until the playoffs when I watch for the underdog. Sometimes the underdog wins the whole thing, I.E. the Patriots winning against the once-mighty Rams, and bam; I have another favorite.
So… have you ever admitted to jumping the bandwagon. Most importantly, are you still on the bandwagon? I love my Buffalo Bills, but I still have some Patriot love (even though they’re in the same division)
I’ve been a Buccaneers fan since they first began. I know all about losing seasons. Rather than finding backup teams though, I tend to focus more on players and coaches that I like regardless of the team they play for. I wouldn’t think of consistently rooting for any other team than my Bucs.
A Bills fan with “Patriot love”? Shi…I know some guys that would spit in your beer for saying something like that.
In baseball I really only root for my lifelong favorite team, the Cincinnati Reds. That can get frustrating, though, so I save a little affection for my adopted town and root for the Mariners (from a discreet distance; haven’t had the pleasure of Safeco Field yet).
In my NFL-obsessed days (ages 11-16 or so) I had elaborate rank-orderings of the teams I liked so there was always someone to root for–and against. When the Bengals aren’t doing well, which is most of the time, I temporarily decathect and spread the rooting around to the Browns, Rams, Raiders, Broncos (yes, I like the Raiders and the Broncos) and a few others, and against the Steelers (that antipathy will last my whole life long).
I also root against any expansion team formed after 1977, on the grounds that they shouldn’t exist at all. Exception: the Cleveland Browns, even though the cloning process was a little off.
After 42 years of rooting the Mets, I have become so convinced that they are a corruptly run organization that can’t locate their ass with both hands and a map because it’s cheaper to go assless (while fully maintaining to their fanbase that this is the season they will finally locate at leat one buttock), I have been amusing myself this year by rooting against them, in the hope that they will have to come to their senses after finishing in or near the cellar for the fifth straight year.
And although it’s inconvenient (I live about five minutes from Shea Stadium), I have become a Boston Red Sox fan, and am rooting for the Sox, whom I believe sincerely intend to compete for their division this year, and not just put up a team that its most deluded fans can persuade themselves have a shot at winning it.
I have also pretty much been booted off a thriving Mets-fan site (that I helped start four years ago) for voicing this opinion.
I’m afraid I’m strictly a one-team gal. In baseball, that was the Pirates. I moved back to town two days after the baseball strike ended and swore off baseball for life. Then an employer gave me tickets on the first base line, 15 rows back. To make matters worse, the Pirates pulled it out in the bottom of the ninth and I watched a guy named Aramis Ramirez hit his first Major League home run. I was back to my old love. I wanted to stay with the Pirates, I really did. They even built a beautiful new stadium which I’ve been to once (tickets from a different employer). If I recall, I watched them beat the Cincinnati Reds, who were one of the few teams doing worse than them (sorry, E. Thorp). Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many seasons in a row where they’ve had trouble clearing .500, let alone actually being in contention. The way salaries work in baseball works against them, but I get the impression the team isn’t trying. I gave baseball a second chance. It let me down. I’m no longer a Pirates fan, although I’m sure I could be lured back to baseball and tempted by the Pirates.
I suspect, however, I’ll remain a Steelers fan until I die and was one through the 1980’s, although living in Hawaii, it was difficult to be aware of just how truly bad they were. I also have a certain respect for the Cincinnati Bengals. You see, I remember a season a few years ago when the Steelers were in contention for the playoffs, and the Bengals won exactly 3 games. Two of them were against the Steelers. Even when it seems like they can’t beat anyone else, they’ve managed to beat us!
I was reading your OP and thought it was a nice, interesting, measured discussion about sports fandom, until I got to the part about a Bills fan loving the Patriots, and then my blood pressure spiked and my head blew up.
I’m a one team (per sport) girl. I watch plenty of games between other teams who are not my team, but there isn’t anything emotional about it. Like if I need for the Jets to beat Miami to help Buffalo’s place in the division, it’s all well and good if they do, but that’s about it.
The closet I come to having a “back up” team is the Lions. Yes, I realize that’s like a cosmic joke. What, the Bills weren’t satisfying my masochism enough, so I had to pick up Detroit? Not living in Buffalo, it took some work to find a bar in my neighborhood that showed the Bills games, and as things worked out, it was also home to a little group of expat Detroit fans, so each week I was watching both teams play. Apparently familiarity breeds commiseration. But still, my scale of emotional investment is:
Buffalo
999,999. Empty space, cut for your reading convenience
1,000,000. Very vaguely interested in how Detroit is faring (hey, at least there’s seldom any suspense)
1,000,001 - infinity. Any other team.
Oddly enough, that’s exactly my same ranking for hockey (as far as I remember, it’s been so long). For reasons unrelated to the Lions thing, I’m also very vaguely interested in the Red Wings.
I am genetically a Dodger fan. My grandparents were Dodger fans, my parents were Dodger fans, and I, my wife and kids are Dodger fans.
I am a big fan of just watching baseball, and I’ve found that having no rooting interest in either team playing makes it easier to lose interest. So I have a set of rankings that I use to determine who to root for.
At the top, the Dodgers. If they are playing, I am rooting for them. Period.
Second, the Cubs. I have family in Chicago, and I have liked them since I was a little kid. Wrigley field was the third baseball statium I ever went to.
Third, the Angels (The only team to ever beat both the Yankees and the Giants in the same postseason).
Never mind about the next 25.
Tied for 29th are the Yankees and Giants. Due to my natural allegiance to the Dodgers, I am physically incapable of rooting for either of these teams. If they ever played each other in the World Series, my head might explode. Thankfully, they haven’t done so since before I was born.
There is no more blasphemous sin then a NEW YORKER cheering for the Boston Redsox [spits]. MY YOUR SEED BE WIPED FROM THE EARTH!
Sadly however, I have to agree. The Wilpons need to be dragged out and shot. The entire organization top to bottom is screwed its beyond words. Why OH WHY did the Dodgers have to leave Brooklyn?
Rufus and I part ways after #2 on his list. I’m born and bred a Dodgers fan, with secondary allegiance to the Cubs. Then it’s: #3 - Red Sox fan by marriage, #4- Padres fan by agreement with wife that we have a team we can both root for together, #5 - whoever is playing the Yankees, #6 - whoever is playing the Giants. Kinda sloppy, I know, but it does keep us involved in the season to the bitter end.
I would never give up my on my 2 favorite teams. Yankees and Giants in NFL.
However, I gave up on teams owned by the Dolans. Several years back I quit watching my Rangers and just gave up on hockey.
I was always a Knicks fan and “Shudder” switch allegiance to the Nets about 4 years ago.
The Dolans have been so bad for NY sports, I can’t even understand it.
Met fans, you have a couple of exciting young players, Beltran should come around next year. You have a nucleus of a good team. Give Omar & Willie a chance they are much smarter than Steve Phillips/Dukette & Howe.
It takes several years to undo complete idiocy.
Please think about late 80’s and early 90’s Yanks.
Also I always liked having an AFC team to root for each year. As a Giant fan, I wanted Bill B as our coach and really like the way he runs the team, so I have rooted for them as my AFC choice. When Bill P had the Jets, I actually rooted for them except in Head to Head games with the Giants. In 70’s & 80’s I rooted for Dolphins.
Of course now he is dead to me. Cowboys: my most hated football team.
I’ve been a Mets fan since 1965. Though I might root for a different team in the World Series if they’re not in it, I don’t give up.
I’ll admit I started out a Yankees fan, but, in my defense, there really wasn’t any choice. The Dodgers and Giants left town before I was aware of baseball, so the Yankees were the only game in town. After the Yankees lost the '64 WS, I figured that, if I was going to root for a team that lost World Series, I might as well root for one that isn’t going to win one.
Back in 1991 after one of the Indians’ then typical trade a good player for 3 hopeless prospects type trade I filed papers and switched to the worst to first Atlanta Braves for the duration of the season, which included the exciting 7 game World Series against the Twins. The next season I went back to the Indians and have been with them ever since.
I gave up on the NFL when the original Browns franchise left town in 1995. I understand the league has somehow withstood the loss of my revenue stream. For college football I root for Notre Dame, Kent State and whoever’s playing Florida State, Michigan and Southern Cal.
With football, I’m all about the Giants. However, my wife is a huge Miami fan, so I consider myself a Dolphins Fan-By-Proxy…as long as their not going head-to-head with Big Blue, I’ll put my cheers behind the 'Fins.
The only other sport I follow is basketball, and I root for the Knicks and Nets about evenly.
I know they haven’t been mentioned yet, but college sports fans never give up on their team. I, for example watched Mississippi State play its last home game of the season after another hopeless year in a driving sleet storm I was ill prepared for. Professional sports teams, I couldn’t care less about any of them but perhaps the Braves, and them only because my grandfather loved to watch them back when Dale Murphy played for them. They always let you down, at least in the post-season.
I’ve long since stopped routing for “home” teams. Cheering for the Cubs or the Bears is the same as cheering for IBM or Microsoft. They are no more “my” or our team than Abbot is my company because it is located in Illinois. I enjoy the spectacle of sports but I do not get passionate about it or consider myself to have an ownership interest in it.
With two exceptions:
The Dublin Senior Gaelic Football Team (you have to be from Dublin to play for them) and the Irish national soccer team.
To the OP’s original question, I gave up on Ireland in June of this year. I was in Lansdowne Rd. watching Ireland play Israel. We’re (I can say that as the players can only play for Ireland and not move around) up 2-0 and cruising. The Israeli’s are on the road to a hiding. Then, our striker Robbie Keane goes off after being pushed down/falling down after 23 minutes of the match. Our coach, Brian Kerr (from Cabra in Dublin) decides to throw on a defensive midfielder.
He puts on a defensive midfielder even though we are up 2-0 and it’s still the first %)@*#@ half.
I went nuts right then and there.
Israel came back and scored 2 goals in about 5 minutes. Game ends 2-2 because of Kerr. We drop 4 points against a truly shite team.
I gave up. I was gutted. Have tickets for the France match in Dublin in September but I think I will give them up. Damn, it still hurts!
When I moved from Detroit in 81, I decided to root for the local teams. It only worked out that way for the Niner’s and the Oakland A’s. But I still follow the Lions and the Tigers. I’ve never rooted for anyone in the NBA except the Pistons or whoever were playing against the Lakers or Celtics.
To answer the OP, since I’ve been a diehard Niner’s fan since 81, I’ve never given up on them. I even nanaged to cringe through the whole 2-14 season last year. I will also watch all preseason and 16 game regular season although our chances of even a .500 season this year is between slim and none.
