No NFL team to cheer for

Some do take it to extremes. Of course, it's all subjective and the whole thing gets a bit silly.

I wonder how long it will take the fanboy police to chime in here.

 

WFW.

There are fans of teams I otherwise don't care for that are reasonable, informed or both which makes holding a conversation very easy. On the other hand, there are fans of the team for which I back that are irrational, impossible and that I would almost wish for a restraining order.

Unless you feel you must have a team to pull for, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

Thanks. If I could only find Running Zack winning the mile, I'd be in bliss.

 

I grew up in a town 2½ hours from the closest NFL stadium, and there were three directions to choose from. So your "home" team was either the Lions, Browns, or Bengals. Now, since those three teams generally sucked and were never on TV when I was growing up, most kids my age chose either the Steelers or the Cowboys.

I didn't want to root for the team everyone else rooted for so in 1978 while watching the scores cross the bottom of the screen I decided I would root for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers cuz I thought it was a cool name. I lived and died with Tampa Bay scores, mostly just them flickering across the 10-minute ticker.

I did love Doug Williams, though. But after the Bucs made the NFC Championship game a couple years later and sputtered out I wanted a new team. So I went with the Buffalo Bills. That one lasted through the Jim Kelly era and even into the Doug Flutie/Rob Johnson/Music City Miracle era when I moved to Cleveland. I'll tell you, I knew as much about the Buffalo Bills as anyone. I would watch them every time they were on TV, read up on them, do whatever I could to find out info about the Buffalo Bills. I lived and died with them.

Now I'm here in Cleveland. I want the Browns to win cuz it's a lot more fun when they do, but it's not live and die anymore. I miss those days.

Anyway, your buddies don't really think your opinions don't matter about the teams, they are just pissed cuz they don't have any team to rag you about since you don't profess to like anyone.

 

You do realize it says Image Hosted By Tripod, right? There's no Zack there.

 

I'm a big Mets fan, my grandma and one of my best friends are life-long Yankees fans, another is a Red Sox fan, and one of my closest friends from college is a Braves fan. Surprisingly, we are all objective about our teams, and our thoughts are baseball-first, favorite team-second. Those are my favorite types of fans. Sure, they can spend 16 minutes explaining to you why Dale Murphy is underrated -- an, no, I don't mean you, Buck -- but at the end of the conversation, they'll say, "I want the Braves to win the East, but the Mets -- or Phillies ... asses -- are clearly the best team in the National League."

How can you be mad at an objective fan of the game?

 

Son of a bitch. That's twice. This is why I don't change it.

 

I don't understand how people can get so worked up over a baseball or football team...

 

Is it any different than getting worked up over a band?

 

TSP, I think you nailed it. I talk all kinds of crap about their team, and they can't fire back.
My favorite team has become whoever is playing theirs, and I take great joy in their misery.

 

If your comments to friends includes such refrains as "Your team sucks! I can understand why they might take offense. After all, they can't rip your team. It hardly seems fair.

I was a Cowboys fan in grade school. Then they got a new owner, dumped Tony Dorsett and fired legendary coach Tom Landry. Since I lived 1,000 miles from Dallas, I saw little reason to continue rooting for the team.

I was sort of still a Dallas fan, but the enthusiasm was gone. One summer, Houston went undefeated in preseason. I liked Warren Moon and the run-and-shoot. So I started to root for them.

A few years later, that team moved to Tennessee. Had I been a Texan, I might have gone back to cheering for Dallas. Instead, I became a Tennessee Titans fan.

I can proudly say that I've been a fan of the same organization for 22 years. But I'm not that passionate these days. I just feel detached from this team that I like for reasons that are trivial, at best. I'd love to join my friends in cheering for the Bears. But I've hated the Bears for almost 30 years now.

I still like to see Dallas win, too.

 

MTM, now I understand exactly where your co-workers are coming from. The only real rooting interest you have is in somebody else's team losing? That's kind of sad.