What would make you abandon your team?

The Game Room
21

I grew up an LA Rams fan. My fandom was peaking right before they moved; I think I was a bigger Rams fan than any other major sports team (Clippers, Angels) in the early 90’s. After they moved, I cut the cord, which made their winning the SB a few years later more painful.

I technically “abandoned” the Angels in favor of the Giants. A few mitigating factors, though: I grew up as a secondary Giants fan because my dad was raised in SF. I also moved to the Bay Area for college so I’ve been here for almost half my life now.

22

Things have looked better the last couple of years. They don’t seem to be part of the perpetual ‘which team is moving to LA?’ carousel and it looks like the home games in Toronto are an effort to expand the market and not a search for a more lucrative home. But there are times I’ve been pretty worried about it.

23

I did it. I finally changed beloved teams in the 1984 NFL season. This is a painful story, and in the end I am simply a bandwagon jumper, abandoning my once-beloved Rams for my now-beloved 49ers. I’ll try to be brief.

Like markdash, I grew up an LA Rams fan. How does a kid pick his teams when you’re living hundreds of miles away from any NFL city in Upstate New York and your dad doesn’t care about sports? I was a young boy, my favorite color was blue, and Roman Gabriel and I share a similar ethnic heritage. That was enough for me and I quickly grew to love the Rams, especially after they changed their colors from blue & white to blue & gold, Tommy Prothro took over as coach, and they became very good in the 1970s! By then Roman Gabriel was tossing TDs to Harold Carmichael in Philadelphia.

I lived and (mostly) died with the Rams in the 1970s, during my teenaged years. They ripped my heart out in Super Bowl XIV when they were leading late in the game - could they really beat the then-3-time Super Bowl champion Steelers?!?!. The LAMBS lost it at the very end and, what’s worse for a teenaged kid like me making minimum wage, they didn’t even cover the big 11 point spread and lost it, 31-19.

Soon after, my family moved to San Francisco. We lived literally ¾ of a mile from Candlestick Park. In 1981 (the season for “The Catch”, and Super Bowl XVI), thousands of supposed “Forty Niner Faithful” came out of nowhere! Bandwagon jumpers, all of them. BAAH!

For the next three years, it was awful living so close to a class organization as Eddie DeBartolo treated his players with First Class, while Georgia Frontiere was simply Carol Rosenbloom’s widow, and her organization didn’t know how to build a team like my beloved Rams.

Joe Montana was a magician as a QB, and the 49ers took good care of ex-Rams Wendell Tyler and Jack “Hacksaw” Reynolds. As the Niners neared their second Super Bowl in 1984, it was becoming too much for me, living so close. When they dismantled and utterly destroyed the much-vaunted Dan Marino and Shula’s Dolphins, that sealed the deal. No more Rams for me.

I became, and still am now after these late awful seasons, a 49er Faithful. BTW, last season was great!

GO NINERS!

24

Over time, I’ve gradually lost interest in certain sports or teams, but there’s never been a magical moment that caused me to say, “That’s it- I HATE that team now.”

But I will say this… even though I didn’t go there and have hardly ever known anyone who did, the Penn State Nittany Lions were one of my favorite college football teams for many years. I don’t exactly hate them now (the kids on the team didn’t do anything wrong, after all)… but I don’t think I’ll ever root for them again.

25

Like echo, I had a personal reason to pick a team as a kid. I became a Bengal fan because: 1. The Pats sucked, and 2. like Boomer Esaison, I’m a lefty.

26

I grew up in North Carolina as a Redskins fan (hey there were on the local CBS affiliate EVERY Sunday…). Anyway, when the Panthers came to town, I resisted shifting allegiances.

When Jack Kent Cooke sold the team to Dan Snyder - I resisted.

When Snyder ran the team into the ground - I resisted.

When Snyder started suing widowed grandmothers who couldn’t afford to keep paying for season tickets their dead husband had signed up for…

Go Cats! Rowr!

27

The 1994 strike and the lack of revenue sharing made me more or less abandon the sport. Very rarely I watch a bit of a game. I would say that I’ve watched maybe two complete baseball games in total since Joe Carter’s home run ended the 1993 season.

28

Baseball does have revenue sharing, and they’ve had it for a long time. The problem is that some of the teams don’t spend their payments on players (I think the Royals are a prime example). They’ve taken some steps to address that lately.

29

Marge Schott got me to stop caring about the Reds back when. To be fair, though, I was never a huge fan, more of a local transplant with no other real allegiances.

30

When Chick Hearn passed away, I just really couldn’t listen to any more Laker games…it just didn’t feel like it was my team…he was my team. I wonder if I’m gonna feel the same way with Bob Miller and Vin Scully.

31

My core teams to root for are the Mets and the Knicks, and I’ve “abandoned” them from time to time. Not for another team, though; I simply lost interest in watching or following the sport because “my” team had become something I didn’t like. And I’ve liked “bad” teams before that had no real shot at a championship run.

I dropped off on following the Knicks in the early 2000s because they were both unlikeable, unwatchable and increasingly expensive at the same time. I got the bug again when they traded for Chandler (exactly the sort of “plays with fire and heart” kind of guy I think of as the foundation for a good team), and really got back into them again this past year with the whole “Linsanity” thing that showed me how beautiful the game could be with a triangle of a penetrating point guard with passing vision, a rebounding center and a deadly outside shooter who can move without the ball. A game I prefer to enjoy in tinted in orange and blue :slight_smile:

Similarly I lost interest in the 2002 and 2003 Mets - again, unlikeable and unwatchable. I paid less attention to them in the second half of 2009 as well because they weren’t even really the Mets on the field - with all the injuries they were practically fielding a AAA team, and the Mets 2009 AAA team wasn’t very good even playing against AAA players :P. Not only did the games not matter, the career development of most of the players on the field didn’t really matter to me. But I remained a Mets fan (a season ticket holder, even) and am enjoying the team now. Even if I don’t really expect them to win more than 85-88 games, I like them and have some hope for a second half surprise.

32

Good thing they fired their coach and ditched that offense to placate Carmelo Anthony. But even as a non-Knicks fan, it was fun while it lasted.

33

Suppose he goes to Michael Andretti’s Dodge team? By your username, I’m guessing you’re a diehard Ford man, or are you just an anti-Toyota guy?

I followed Richard Petty from Plymouth to Ford to Dodge to Pontiac. He remained a Plymouth guy in my mind the whole time. While I still root for Petty’s team, my secondary allegiance is to Kyle Busch. Kenseth is pretty good and I wouldn’t abandon him. I did abandon Roush when he failed to get Mark Martin a championship.

I remember when stock cars had chrome bumpers and bench seats. There’s not enough car in today’s racers to make me support a specific manufacturer. And there won’t be next year either.

34

I wasn’t the hugest D’Antoni fan, and I think Woodson did a decent job in the short time he had the helm. He let the looser offensive scheme remain while overseeing a tighter focus on defense, something I always felt D’Antoni was lacking - under D’Antoni the Knicks were among the worst in the NBA in PPG allowed.

I do worry about Carmelo - I’m not a big fan and wasn’t happy at all with the trade that brought him in - and Lin has yet to really prove himself, only shown great promise. But on the whole, the team is “watchable” enough again to meet my minimum bar for fan interest.

35

I dunno. I have already completely abandoned the NBA, and have steadily drifted away from the NFL, so there’s precedent. The Sox are basically undergoing a Perfect Storm of Suck, and spectacularly fucking up in myriad ways which make it very hard to be enthusiastic, at all. After 1986 & 2003 I was stunned to the core, sure, but after the shock and despair wore off I was still pretty amped for the next season. This instead feels like the mid-90’s and the NBA to me (which was more disillusionment with how the league was run and how the game was played than with a specific team, but still).

36

I was always a Ford fan, but never really a Roush fan until he was about the only Ford team left. I actually became a Kenseth fan when he bumped Tony Stewart out of the way to win his first race while driving a Chevy.

I followed Bill Elliott to Dodge, but always wished he would come back to Ford. I was glad to see him retire in the 21 car… but he won’t retire.

I’ll always welcome Kenseth back to Ford, but I’m not going to cheer him while he drives for Joe Gibbs. I hope Stenhouse is able to do good in what I hope is the 6 car. I"m also glad Brad K will be in a Ford next year. I’m not sure who will be in the 22, but hopefully it runs good. I’d like to see Petty remain with Ford also.

37

Yep. I’ve been a Cubs fan for 30+ years. No matter how many times they break my heart after another pathetic season and I swear I’m done with them, one good winning streak and I’m right back there with them. I could never abandon the Cubs completely. I don’t understand it, and I can’t explain it. It’s like a train wreck.

I blame my dad, he was a huge Cubs fan too. Dad, why couldn’t you have been a Yankees fan?

38

I was a Cleveland Browns fan. Then they left. I not only abandoned the team, I abandoned the league. Fuck you, NFL.

Now that I’m living in LA, I’m still a devoted Indians fan, but if they left Cleveland I don’t think it would bother me as much as it would have when I was living in Ohio. I can’t think of any other decision as a team that would phase me. They have been a terrible team for most of my life, so that’s not gonna do it.

39

A .500 team is a Perfect Storm of Suck?

40

In this division, unfortunately, yes.