What the hell does “mostly” mean here?
I have been a Boston Red Sox fan since I was three and learned about baseball. My biggest regret is that I could never try out for the team. I will be a Boston Red Sox fan until the day I die (and beyond?:eek:) regardless of where I live. However I will not show a lack of respect for the home team of where I live.
I think it means that people are willing to be flexible and to some extent go-along-to-get-along.
Probably the most common is something like—A guy grew up a Mudville Nine fan but now lives in Hackensack. He remains a Mudville loyalist at heart—but all his friends and work colleagues in Hackensack and his own spouse and children are Hackensack Bulls fans, so when he is with them he goes along with the crowd and roots for Hackensack, unless their fortunes happen to be in direct conflict with Mudville for that particular game/match.
This is quite common in my experience—parents will even switch loyalties to go along with their children’s preferences.
Put the most simple I can: Do you root for your home team or no? If yes, I’d say you should click the first one. Or, if you moved and still root for your old city’s team, you’d choose the second.
I’ve lived in or near Seattle much longer than I lived in the place I’m “from.” I gradually became fans of the local teams here, and by now, after 25+ years, I’m 100% fan of the good guys.
Mixture of choices 1 and 3. I was born a Clevelander, and I will therefore always cheer for Cleveland teams ahead of anyone else. However, most games don’t involve Cleveland teams, and I need to cheer for someone there, too, so I’ll also cheer for teams from other places I’ve lived. But if they play against Cleveland, no contest.
For me, distance eventually weakens loyalty, but it takes awhile.
For instance, when I first became aware of pro sports in the mid-1960s, I rooted for the Dodgers in baseball and the Rams in football because I was born in Los Angeles, despite having lived in the DC area since I was a 4 year old in 1958.
I only really became a Redskins fan in 1971, when George Allen, who had been coaching the Rams for several years previous, came east to coach the Redskins, and brought several of his veteran players with him. (People joked about the “Ramskins” during the 1971 season.)
I was still rooting for the Dodgers through 1990, though I did flirt with a couple of AL teams along the way. My wife converted me to Braves fandom when we got married in 1991 - good timing, that. 
Now I’m strictly a Nats fan, and have been ever since they moved to DC and became the Nats in 2005. Football’s dropped off the radar due to CTE.
I’ve been an Orioles fan since 1971, and I haven’t lived in Maryland since '86.
I started taking an interest in football when the Ravens started up in 1996. Before that I had some Colts and Skins gear as a kid but only cared about baseball (Orioles), hockey (Capitals) and college basketball (Go Terps!)
Moved to Madison for about 10 years and married a Sconnie girl, so I developed a soft spot for the Packers. I’ll root for them as long long as they’re not playing the Ravens, which almost never happens. Same thing with Wisconsin basketball.
To the extent that I root for any sports team at all, I generally define it by rooting AGAINST the team in the place that I live. I’m just contrary that way.
I grew up in Green Bay, and I went to school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Despite having now lived in Chicago for nearly 27 years, the Packers, Badgers, and Brewers are still my primary teams, and always will be.
I married a woman who comes from a family of White Sox fans, and so the Sox have effectively become my secondary baseball team (made even easier now by the fact that the Brewers moved to the NL in the 90s).
Since Wisconsin doesn’t have an NHL team, I did wind up adopting the Blackhawks as my hockey team. I was never a big basketball fan, so I remain indifferent between the Bucks and the Bulls.
I moved from Houston where I grew up to Dallas, and for the most part, still keep up with the Houston teams.
That said, I half-assedly keep up with the Rangers and the Mavericks more than I do the Astros or Rockets, mostly because they’re on TV and mentioned on TV about 5x more than the Houston teams.
But I’ll be DAMNED if I’ll ever be a Dallas Cowboys fan. Interestingly enough… I quit watching pro football for that reason. I moved to Dallas after the Oilers had left Houston, swearing to never watch the Titans, and refused to watch the Cowboys either. So for several years, I got out of the habit of watching pro football and despite the Texans being around, haven’t ever got back into the habit. I mostly confine my pro football activities to trolling Cowboys fans about Tony Romo’s suckitude these days, despite having no real dog in the fight (Romo’s not as bad as I make him out to be). It’s just amusing to watch people go through the most absurd mental and logical gymnastics to justify Romo’s existence without complimenting Jerry Jones’ management.
Neither. I have never lived, and probably never will live, in the city where my sports teams are.
I grew up as a fan of the LA Dodgers, switched to the Angels as an adult, then drifted away from either of them when I moved to Alaska. I became a Red Sox fan when I moved to New England. So I definitely blow with the local wind.
I voted for the final option (my case is different…) because I’m a Lakers fan in addition to the Chicago Cubs and Chicago Bears. When I lived in Florida and suburban DC for a while, I never became a fan of Florida or DC pro teams, but instead stayed loyal to my original favorites.
I was raised in Kansas City until age 18, then I moved to Indiana. I have and always will be a Chiefs and Royals fan. For a while I was a secondary Colts fan (it was hard to not root for Payton living in Indy during his big stretches), but I went to the Chiefs at Colts playoff game 2 years ago - and I will never again root for the Colts. That game took years of my life away.
No matter where I have lived around the world after high school, I’ve always supported the LA sports teams I grew up with. If I attend a baseball game here in Japan, I wear my Dodgers jersey and cap. I’ve been to NBA, NHL and NFL games here in Tokyo and usually wore LA-based team gear while attending, even if they are not participating.
I would attend a Seattle Sonics game ever 2 or 3 years. After the team was moved to Oklahoma City, any interest in pro basketball has gone away. I went to a Portland Trailblazers game a few years ago but there is no way I would root for a team from Oregon.
I grew up in the Cleveland area, and became an Indians fan in 1969 when I started getting “straight A tickets” to a couple of games each summer. I was excited when I got to junior high and the annual allotment increased to seven games’ worth. Then new owner Nick Mileti decided that giving away tickets cheapened the baseball experience (ignoring the fact that some of the kids and parents filling a few of those otherwise-empty 70,000 seats would be buying food and souvenirs, not to mention that a few brainy kids who hated sports because they sucked in gym class might develop appreciation for the national pastime and eventually become wealthy season-ticket-holding adults).
Even so, I continued to root for the Tribe until 1994, when the season-ending strike turned me off of baseball for a while. In the meantime, I moved to Indiana, and noticed that the TV cable and satellite packages featured the Cubs, Reds, and White Sox. When I found my interest drifting back to the diamond ten years ago, my interest in the Indians was somewhat rekindled, but has never returned to its one-time intensity. However, the White Sox are in the Tribe’s division, and I’m not a fan of the Reds’ broadcasting rotation. So my “local” team is the Cubs, aided by the fact I always kind of liked them because they and the Indians were both “lovable losers” during my formative years as a baseball fan.