When Staubach retired it was the beginning of the end. And the firing of Landry was the final nail for me, not just the Cowboys, but football in general.
Fortunately, Robinson played out the duration of his career with the Spurs and Tim’s gonna end up doing the same.
I’m a die-hard Indians and Browns fan. I just can’t get in to watching any other teams. Both teams will suck hard and then do well, so you gotta watch because they’ll always surprise you 
I am known for being in going-nowhere relationships, though. I guess it’s the same thing with sports. heh
I’m not a huge college football fan, but it’s kind of hard to escape Buckeye fever when you grow up in Ohio. I do have a special spot in my heart for UGA football, though, so I will occasionally watch and root for them.
If the two teams ever met up in a bowl game, though, UGA would not get any of my love.
At least he didn’t say Miami.
Vikings.
I too am a Mets fan, have been one from 1961 when the franchise was awarded. (Funny how many Mets fans are showing up in this thread.) My first experience of baseball was after the Dodgers and Giants left town and The Yankees were the only game in town. G-d, were they boring! In 1961 Mantle led the team in stolen bases with 7, in 8 attempts. They didn’t hit and run. They didn’t bunt. A man would get on base and just stand waiting for the next guy to hit a home run… which he probably did. They had 6 guys with 20+ homeruns and 2 or 3 guys with 15 or more. They also had the season pennant locked up by late August so there were 6 weeks at the end of the season where the only thing that mattered was the Mantle-Maris chase, which I lost interest in after Mantle gave up in early September. Anything had to be better than this.
So I embraced the Mets even before they had signed or drafted their first player. They may have been awful but they were fun and they were interesting, something the Yankees had forgotten how to be. I’ll always be a Mets fan. 1969 assured that. But now, and for many years, it hasn’t been fun. Even the Yankees-Mets series wasn’t any fun. The Mets never had a chance but worse than that, they had no spark either. Maybe the new regime will restore the spark.
I lived in Cleveland during the 1970s, a dispiriting thing in and of itself, and the Indians were the only option available. I tried to become an Indians fan but it never took. The season was 1 game long. They would sell out Memorial Stadium for the opener and that would be 10% of their attendance for the year. The stadium was a miserable venue to watch a game and the teams they fielded were awful. The best young players either never lived up to the hype or went quickly to other, better teams. Every season I would read the spring training news with excitement. By May I would lose interest. At least the Mets had made losing fun. The Indians just made it dreary.
Then I moved to Seattle, and for the longest time it was the Indians redux. Bad, boring teams in another dreary building, the Kingdome. I went to a lot of games and "root, root, root’ed for the home team but without much hope. Then a miraculous thing happened. The Mariners brought Ken Griffey Jr. to the majors and baseball became fun again. It still is even if the current team leaves much to be desired. They’re finally throwing big money about but without much effect. i fear that Bavasi may suffer from Steve Phillips disease. They’ve given up on this year and are playing for next year now. It’s the right decision but I think the current administration believed their own hype about how good their farm team’s pitching was. So far, the young pitchers haven’t been effective, and the veteran but still young pitchers Like Meche and Pineiro have been wildly inconsistent. I fear that we’ll see a couple of rebuilding years before they become competitive but at least the team is entertaining. I don’t see myself giving up on the M’s.
I have never “given up” on being a (baseball) Giants fan, even when they suckity-suck-suck, like this year. However, since I live in Chicago, I am very vaguely on the White Sox bandwagon this year. I think it would be great for the city if they made it to the World Series, and besides, it would piss off the Cubs fans. This’ll probably get me in trouble, since most of my friends in Chicago are Cubs fans, but as a group, they are the most neurotic fandom I have encountered. CraaaAAAAzy!
Even tho I don’t really follow sports much at the moment, I still maintain favorites and no, I don’t ever give up on them.
NASCAR - Kurt Busch is the man. Go Kurt go!
Football - Tampa Bay Bucs and FSU Seminoles (pro & college)
Basketball - Orlando Magic and FSU Seminoles (pro & college)
Baseball - New York Yankees and FSU Seminoles (pro & college)
Hockey - who cares
Part of the fun of being a sports fan is that you can better revel in the glory when your loser team finally does win. When Tampa Bay won the Super Bowl, after 21 years as a team with some of the worst seasons in NFL history, it was tres cool to lord if over all the Steelers, Cowboys and 49ers fans. I never like a losing season, but it makes the winning seasons that much sweeter.
The only homie team I root (heh) for is the Red Wings.
The rest of Detroit teams are just that unappealling ( baseball ), pathetic ( football) or uninteresting ( basketball.)
I’m a wings fan. Have been since I first watched them play. I may like other teams or root for other teams if the wings go out of the playoffs, but that simply from the standpoint of a hockey fan. The Detroit Red Wings are my team and always will be. I would still wear my jersey on game days even if I moved to Toronto or Denver.
For other sports, I root for the Detroit teams as well. Not as passionately as for the wings, but I have to support them. Even the tigers and the Lions.
I have continued following my hometown Mariners closely, despite the frustrations of the last two years. I’ve gone to see only a couple of games in person, but I listen to them on the radio or watch them on TV whenever I have the opportunity. It’s been a real test of patience, but I am not a fairweather fan. This means the next year or two is likely to be difficult, also, until the current crop of rookies gets polished and the front office clears some money to spend on some quality starting pitching. The earliest the M’s will contend is 2007, and that’ll be with some huge breaks. But I’ll be watching all the way.
It depends on what exactly you mean by “give up”. As many who have contributed to this thread already have professed, I am a Mets and Knicks fan and have been for the past 12 years, so I know something about “giving up” on a season. Or in the case of the Knicks, for the foreseeable future. 
But I can’t bring myself to truly root for another team. It’s so much easier to simply root against other teams, in my case, the Yankees and Braves in baseball and the Lakers and Heat in basketball (for obvious reasons). Despite MonkeyMule’s imprecations, I will admit to having rooted for the Red Sox last year, though only in their series against the Yankees; I definitely would have preferred to see their Streak continue.
Well, I stopped reading Alpha Flight when they had to many mystical issues in a row. Plus the artwork stank.
My ranking of which team to support:
Kurt Busch is not a man. Kurt Busch is a hamster.
The List:
MLB - St. Louis Cardinals
NBA - Don’t really have a team, although I have been watching Detroit for Tayshaun Prince.
NFL - St. Louis Rams
NASCAR - Little E (and then the other posse members: Smoke, Happy and Truex)
College - The Kentucky Wildcats. Even in football.
For the NHL this year, I’m debating which of the closest teams I want to latch on to: Columbus or Nashville. I’m leaning towards Columbus, since hockey in Nashville is wrong.
I have never given up on my Steelers, but if they let Hines Ward go then I may give up on them. Not because they wouldn’t still win games but because Hines was what the “Steelers” where supposed to be about.
I’ve sworn many times that I was finished rooting for the Falcons once and for all. I was going to switch to some other team, like the Packers or something.
I just can’t do it, though. I can take a dispassionate, rather scientific interest in other teams and other sports, but when the Falcons are playing, I suddenly care desperately about every single first down.
Example: Yesterday I drove 13 hours, half of it in a pounding thunderstorm, on the way back from vacation. Then I got up at 4:00 a.m. this morning to watch the Falcons play the Colts in a meaningless preseason game broadcast from Japan.
And we won.
Agree with everything (except maybe #5) and add “anyone playing the Texans and the 49er’s.”
I also root for San Diego (if they’re not playing Dallas)–my mom was a cheerleader for them in their very first season.
I have sometimes given up on caring about the game when my team does poorly, but I never switched allegiances to a “backup” team. If my team isn’t going to win it all, I stop caring about who does.
WHAT TIME IS IT? GAME TIME!
WHAT TIME IS IT? GAME TIME!
WE GONNA WIN THIS GAME? SHO 'NUFF!
WE GONNA DOMINATE? SHO 'NUFF!
WE ARE? NEW YORK!
WE ARE? NEW YORK!
WE ARE? NEW YORK!
All New York, all the time. My beloved Big Blue is first and foremost in my heart by a very large margin. The above quote is from HBO’s Inside The NFL pregame footage of Michael Barrow pumping up the troops before we beat th ever living shit out of Kurt Warner opening day two seasons ago. I pop in the tape of that when I want to get the chills. (That game was also notable as the first, and possibly last, game in which William Joseph was anything other than a waste of space.)
So yeah, New York Giants now and forever, until the end of time.
I became a Giants fan due to Parcells, so I added Gang Green as my secondary/AFC team when the Tuna came back to the big apple. Since they are both local – and therefore I get to see all the games and various local commentary – I have stuck with the Jets, although they’ve been seriously pissing me off lately with their stadium shenanigans. (They can potentially force the Giants, who already have a plan and finances to build a new Giants Stadium, to let the Jets invite themselves into the plan. This would mean that it would no longer be called Giants Stadium, which is an affront to humanity. But even worse, the Jets have a massive hardon for a dome, and we all know that playing in a dome is a crime against nature itself.)
I have never given up on either team since becoming a fan.
The New York Rangers, however, I have given up on 7 years in a row. It has been a slow, painful process trying to become an NHL fan. You’d think I could just root for the Devils or Islanders, if you were clinically insane.
Normally, this would dictate me being a Yankees fan. (Giants/Yankees/Rangers vs Jets/Mets/Islanders) However, competitive imbalance offends me on a visceral level, and the Yankees are the pinacle of competitive imbalance, so I can’t stand the Yankees. The Mets aren’t much better when it comes to salary parity, but they aren’t nearly as annoying as the Yankees. Also, one of the waitstaff at the bar where I was a regular was a HUGE Mets fan, and he got me hooked on the Mets in 2000. I’m just not a fan of baseball, but I do consider myself a Mets fan. As tenuous as this fandom is, it will never change.
All New York, all the time. But only the right New York!
Never.
{Ditka}da Bearss!{/Ditka}