When I was a kid, I watched the Braves and Cubs on T.V. I liked the Titans mostly because I thought “The Oilers” was a stupid name and they really upgraded. So since then, I’ve rooted for these three teams for no particular reason.
I suppose you could say that I shouldn’t be a Pirates fan, despite being a Pittsburgh native, on the grounds that no one should ever be a Pirates fan.
Any teams that you support for a reason other than being local to them? Perhaps you really like the city or maybe the team’s colors? Their cheerleaders? Any sport is applicable.
Having been an impressionable, Midget League playing 9 yr old in 1976, the NFL expansion that year had me excited. The Seahawks uni was badass. I have been a fan ever since. I even kept a Jim Zorn football card in my wallet until I was about 14.
The Green Bay Packers. I’m a born and raised Washington Redskins fan, but I love that the Packers are owned by their fans. Also, Green Bay is a small city which wouldn’t have a shot in hell of getting an NFL team today, and I think that makes the Packers symbolic of small towns across America love for football (and sports in general). I don’t follow them closely, but I always root for their success.
Nonsense-- Everyone should be a fan of their own home team. Even folks from Denver or Atlanta, but they’re the only ones who should root for their teams.
I like the Packers for much the same reasons as Asylum, and I have several other teams which I root for for what I would consider perfectly sound reasons. The less-than-rational one, though, is the Milwaukee Brewers. Them, I root for out of gratitude, for that long span back in the 80s when they were the only team my hometown Indians were able to beat.
I’m a fan of the Atlanta sports franchises (yes, even the thrashers, but not the dream. Fuck the dream, and fuck the WNBA.). I’m from Atlanta, so I still fit into your post, but I’m wondering why you specifically mention even folks from Denver or Atlanta.
That said, for some reason I’m only ever a fan of other teams if I want them to kick the crap out of a team I hate, or if they are in some way affecting my Atlanta or Georgia Tech team’s postseason chances.
As a Chicagoan I’m pretty well flush with sports teams to cheer for. I generally find sports bigamy to be somewhat detestable and a sign of low character on the whole so I can’t say that I’m a fan of any other teams. I will however say that there are a couple teams that I have an oblique affection. I don’t really root for them, and I’ll root against them when they happen to have detestable players on their team or if their losing help my teams, but they are teams that I’m always pretty aware of and when there’s nothing at stake I hope they beat the other heathens. If I see a fan in a bar wearing their jersey I won’t mock them openly.
Those teams are the Tennessee Titans and San Diego Chargers.
I kinda like the Titans because when I was a little kid the Oilers were the first team to really run the Run and Shoot offense, and all that passing was cool when I was 9. They had fun baby blue unis and some of my favorite old-time highlights were those of Earl Campbell and Billy White Shoes, but I never forgot that they were, in the end, a Texas team. Then when the moved to Tennessee they became something of a small market underdog which made them extra appealing. The fact that they shifted to a smash mouth style and hired former Bear Jeff Fisher made them even more acceptable to my now maturing sensibilities. Last and most importantly they drafted Eddie George who became a annual staple on my early Fantasy Football teams (along with Frank Wycheck) and won me some titles. So, to this day, I enjoy when the Titans do well (so long and Vince Young isn’t playing).
The Chargers are a little simpler. I love San Diego and have a good friend who lives there. In many ways it’s the anti-Chicago and if I were to move someplace warm and sunny it would be the place. It’s the one city in California that I don’t find pretentious and insufferable. I fondly remember seeing the Air Coryell games on NFL films and Kellen Winslow is one of my all time favorites, especially since I was a TE in High School. Recently, LaDanian Tomlinson emerged as the best back since Walter Payton and he was just impossible not to root for. The emergence of Shayne Merriman has cooled my enthusiasm, but I still prefer them over just about all the AFC teams on any given Sunday.
I would have a MLB team to like if not for the fact that at this point I have a painful memory of all of them somehow crushing my Cubs in one excruciating manner or another so I’m left taking a scorched earth policy in baseball.
Born and raised in the south, living in Memphis, 4 hours from Nashville, 5 hours from St. Louis, 6 hours from New Orleans and Atlanta and out of all those I love the…
Oakland Raiders
The highs of Madden and Gruden (make no mistake - Callahan’s Super Bowl team WAS Gruden’s) to the lows of Marinovich and Beuerleine to the fervent desire for Al Davis to be removed from control of the team - by any means necessary! - one of my top 3 destinations where I would go after hitting the lottery (after Stonehenge and Ireland) is one game in the Black Hole.
I’m Dallas Cowboys fan who discovered at a tender age that Tom Landry had played for the New York Giants…
So, in a Dallas/NYG match up I still root for Dallas, and of coruse I’d prefer to Dallas to win every game for ever and evern until the end of time… but if they can’t win the NFC East/NFC/Superbowl, I’m happy for it to be the Giants.
(One exception: I’d like for the Saints to have greater success in the NFL, so I’d pull for them over the Giants.)
I’ve been a Dallas Cowboys fan since the early 70’s but I have to admit I feel like a hypocrite when I criticize Steinbrenner and the NY Yankees. At least George stays in the owner’s box during the game and not on the field “coaching” his players.
I am from San Diego, and therefore a huge Chargers and Padres fan.
However- somewhere along life’s highway… long before a certain legendary quarterback was on the team leading them to more recent success… I became a fan of the Green Bay Packers.
I believe it was around 1984- I was ten and really starting to follow football in earnest. I discovered that Green Bay (Sad bottom dwellers at the time) used to be a great team- and had in fact won the first two Super Bowls. I thought that was awesome- and followed them ever since.
Of course- if they played the Chargers in the Super Bowl- I’d turn on them in an instant. I like to think of them as my NFC team.
I’m a lifelong New Yorker (not that you could tell from my poor showing in the “New York Feud”), but I started rooting for the Kansas City Royals in 1982 as part of a class baseball pool (we all had to pick our teams from a hat, otherwise everyone would have wanted the Yankees or Mets), and decided to stick with them when they finished better than both New York teams at the end of the year…and ever since.
And my second-favorite baseball team is the Marlins, because I fell in love with their original road uniforms. Pictures don’t do them justice, you had to see the shiny teal outline around the black numbers set against a road-gray background in person in order to really appreciate how good it looks. And the marlin coming out of the “F” in Florida (the tailfin forming the middle bar) on the front of the uniform (not the way it looks on the cap) was pure design genius.
