I've had the idea to write this post for quite a while now. Just never had the time to work on it and put my thoughts down. Most of my posts are about current events and such but this is something that I've always wondered about and I know most people would never think of it, but do you really want everyone in the world to root for your team. You ever heard the phrase, "how can you be insert team name fan." That phrase really bugs me, as if that person has no logical reason to be a fan of whatever team they like. I for one know a few reasons why people are fans of certain that don't happen to be the home team. This is a point I've made a million times, people ask me why do you like who you like? Well when I was picking teams as a kid, Wisconsin sucked at everything but making cheese. The Badgers were garbage in both football and basketball, the Packers sucked, the Brewers and Bucks well they were non-existent. My baseball allegiance is simple, my 4th cousin played for the Giants, when he retired in 1996 my fandom was well established and they had Barry Bonds then so it wasn't hard to keep liking them. They had a star player and were a decent team, not 1st place every year but were in contention year in year out. Since Robby retired the Giants have been to 3 World Series, winning 2, and my fandom has never wavered.
Football is a little more complicated, when I was a kid I saw the Redskins win the Super Bowl, then they did it again a few years later and since then, I've been all-in. It has been a long 20+ years since they've had success but I've stuck with the team, never thought about jumping ship. Not sure why I didn't flip to the Packers when Favre showed up but I never did, I guess I was to ingrained in the Skins even though they stunk and frankly nobody could've blamed me for jumping to the hometown team. College that was a little more difficult, I was a Michigan fan b/c of the Fab Five and the football team drug me a long. When I was between 10-14 everyone loved Michigan, I was one of the few who stuck it out, many of those fans soon became Wisconsin fans as they grew up. I for one stuck by until Rich Rod showed up, jumped ship to Iowa and haven't looked back. Now my move to being an Iowa fan hasn't been called out too much but it has happened, well I have my reasons and who are to tell me if I'm right or wrong.
Now onto what my post is about, why do you ask someone why they like a certain team. How can you be a Bears fan? How about this, well my dad was a Bears fan and we watched the Bears every weekend growing up and now I'm with the team. Would you rather that person say, you know what your right why am I Bears fan, hey give me your Packer hat, I just switched GO PACK GO. There's no honor in that. I need to be liked so much I'm just going to jump ship. We as sports fans hate two things, the first is our rivals, the second is fair weather fans. I for one hate fair weather fans more than my rivals. In fact most of my rivals fans are fair weather fans. Ever notice there is a tong of Cowboy fans around the age of 30? Stupid idiots got caught up in a 4 year run and have been in misery since then. Do I like they root for the Cowboys no, but I respect it since they've stuck it out.
Hating our rivals is something we do, and razzing the rival is part of the territory. However, I would rather you stay my rival then all the sudden you decide you don't like the Dodgers anymore and are instead a Giants fan. I think everyone makes a decision as to why they are fan of certain teams. It's not my job to try to convert you, in fact what fun would it be if everyone liked who I liked, being the out of town fan my whole life I'm actually not sure what to do when I'm in a group of people who like the same team I do. The NFL has 32 teams and 32 fan bases, some are larger than others but all teams have fans and we need to respect those fans. Just remember next time you ask someone why they like the team you hate, if it wasn't for them you wouldn't have anybody to make fun of when you whip their team. In fact that's what makes sports, the fact you can razz you best friend about Iowa beating Iowa St. while he was at the game and probably had to cry himself to sleep.
That's it for this week, I'm real busy so not sure when the next post will be up. Follow me on twitter @derekbredeson for my thoughts during the baseball playoffs, and college and NFL seasons.
