Mostly US pro sports, because being a provincial, insular American that’s about all I know.
I enjoy watching NFL, depsite some questionable business practices. I understand the game and like watching it played well. But is there anything that makes teams different from one another that has ANYTHING to do with the city they’re based in? Is there any reason at all for the locals to be proud of “their” team any more than they would any other local franchise of a nation-wide corporation?
With the way players are drafted, traded, and otherwise distributed within the NFL, there’s really not anything tying a player to a particular city. It’s not like the people of Colorado can look at the Broncos and say, “Them guys came from us!” in quite the same way a high school can look at their team comprised of local kids. It just seems like at the Pro-level, you may as well get all proud of your local Wal*Mart when they have a good streak of sales you like.
That’s kind of like asking why Americans should root for Team USA in the World Cup. Some players might be from other countries. Not a perfect analogy, but you get my point.
I’ve heard it said that sports is basically a safe way to practice tribalism. Therefore, it makes all sorts of sense to root hard for the local team regardless of where the players or owners are from. You take part in the tribalistic play that way.
As a native San Diegan, I learned long ago that hoping for any of our teams to win was an exercise in futility which leads only to heartbreak and madness.
So I don’t care who wins as long as the Raiders lose.
Well, the Packers are the only community-owned not-for-profit club as well as being in the smallest city of any American major league franchise, so I give them an extra measure of respect.
There is a fairly slight, but real, “Twelfth Man” effect. A really involved stadium full of fans has some beneficial effect on the team’s play, skill, scoring, and winning.
So, if your town really is gung-ho for their team, they can claim a little of the credit for a good season.
But…more often, it seems as if it all exemplifies the dictum that the commissioner set forth in Rollerball: “The game is created to demonstrate the futility of individual effort.”
Or, as Dan O’Neill put it:
“Have you ever known true happiness?”
“No. I’m a Giants fan.”
I am not a huge sports fan in general but I can understand it at least a little. I live reasonably close to Gillette (New England Patriots) stadium and a lot of the players live in my immediate area (Aaron Hernandez, the infamous Patriot about to go on trial for murder had a crash pad not 200 yards from me).
I see them all the time when I am out shopping. I might not recognize a few but pro football players usually stand out quite well in public just because of their physique and many of them make it blatantly obvious by driving Ferraris, wearing an obscene number of gold chains and having as many Patriots logos they can fit somewhere.
My ex in-laws were next door neighbors to Tom Brady in the Back Bay of Boston when he lived there. They knew each other and he is a genuinely nice person. I was in Brooks Brothers once a few years ago just before the Superbowl when a few of the younger players came in get outfitted with suits for the non-game activities. They seemed like nice guys and remarkably humble and even a little nervous. That made me root even more for them a few days later when I saw them on the biggest TV event in the world. They may not be from here but I am not either. Many of them are members of the community though even if it is rather transient for most of them.
The teams and a good number of the players tend to get at least a little involved in their adopted communities through charity work, etc. That builds some goodwill and provides a bit of a connection with the fans.
Sometimes players do come from the places where they are now playing, and it’s like a major coup (well, if they are good). See LeBron James on the Cleveland Cavaliers (basketball) and Bernie Kosar of the Cleveland Browns (football). The Browns also had Josh Cribbs, and right now our quarterback (er…the guy who started the most this year at quarterback) is also a “hometown boy.”
I think there definitely is a “twelfth man effect” Crowd noise plays a big part of the Browns’ games when they are home. I think the Indians (baseball) would be better if more people came to home games. Being there to root must have some sort of psychological effect on players.
And yes there’s a lot of tribalism. You pick your teams (or get assigned to them by birth) and you root for the team no matter who is on the team (unless it’s Nick Swisher then you root around him). And when they get traded you’re like “aw, sucks” and mourn them for a bit until his role is replaced and you root for the new guy.
It took me about 20 years as a fan to learn how to get over guys leaving the team and realize my loyalty was to the team itself. Gotta always be looking forward!
I think most sports teams will develop a kind of local attitude based on where they live. Not sure how to explain it but teams in Texas will act like Texans. New York teams get New York attitudes. Same for Chicago teams. pLayers do often develop roots and settle down in their host cities when they retire.
This has been true forever and it works the same way with international sports. Just look at the Yankees and where their most famous players are originally from:
Babe Ruth - Baltimore
Joe DiMaggio - San Francisco
Mickey Mantle - Oklahoma
Reggie Jackson - Pennsylvania
Don Mattingly - Indiana
Derek Jeter - New Jersey
Lou Gehrig is the exception as he was from New York City.
I’m a fan of the Boston sports franchises because they’re who I grew up with. Although I still live near Boston I was a fan of all these teams while I lived in Seattle.
Two NFL examples indicate it’s the city, not the team. Very few fans of the Colts remain in Baltimore, they’ve all shifted their allegiance to the Ravens. Same with the Browns fans, who didn’t follow their team to Baltimore but rooted for no one until the new Browns came into being.
What has long amused me is the assumption that you’re into your local sports team. Like when a lot of people find out I’m from Columbus Ohio they start talking to me about OSU football. Having never watched one of their games, my only knowledge of the team is that the band does the script Ohio thing and the rivalry is with Michigan I get lost in about 3 seconds.
Sometimes loyalty follows a team, but it isn’t hereditary. My grandpa used to root for the Orioles in addition to the Cardinals, because the Orioles used to be the St. Louis Browns. But any St. Louisan born after 1953 is going to have a hard time rooting for a team that moved to Baltimore over 60 years ago. (And good luck finding a regular season Orioles game on local TV.)
EDIT: Sometimes the opposite happens. For example, I don’t really follow the Rams, because they didn’t come to St. Louis until I was 13. I didn’t grow up rooting for them, and my family has no history of rooting for them. And there’s the fact that there’s no local basketball team. So even though I love watching basketball, I don’t follow a team and so rarely end up watching a game.
There are times when I have become a fan of the home team, if I have not had any prior fidelities to anyone else. But I’ve found that I cannot do that anymore, times have changed.
A couple of cases in point. Living in Kansas, I becamem a Jayhawks basketball fan, which was a lot of fun because they won a lot. Then, most of the players were Kansas boys, a few from Missouri and maybe one or two recruited elswhere. Kansans were very proud of their team. But now, they have only one Kansas-raised player on the whole roster, they have entered into the bidding war to recruit the best talent from all over the continent, and I simply don’t care anymore.
Same with the Canadiens, when I lived in Montreal. In the 60s, 3/4 of the Habs were Quebec-born players, and truly represented Montreal, and I loved following them. Now, I think there is only one, maybe two, Quebecers on the roster, and the coach can’t even speak French to the local media.
When I went to LSU, the whole football team was Louisiana boys, a few from Mississippi and one or two from Texas, and they won the national championship. There is still quite a lot of local talent, so I still follow them, but eventually, they will go down the same path. The Oregon football team is all California boys, so why would anybody in Oregon care if they beat other teams of California boys?
Here is a data point for the sociologists studying this question:
When the soccer world cup was held near my home in the USA, the Brazilian team was lodging in the town next door. In a few days, they became the local team that everyone was cheering for.
