The Sports Informant

It’s always interesting to me to hear how fans grew to love the teams they do. Most stories revolve around growing up watching local teams on TV with fathers. But some vary slightly, and it’s these that I want to talk about today.

Sure, everyone in Sacramento should be a Kings fan. It’s only natural. That’s the team you can go see consistently in person and so that’s who you should root for. By that regard, it makes sense to be part of the “49er Faithful” or the “Raider Nation” as well. But what if these teams stink consistently for a decade? Then what?

Logically, die hard fans would say it doesn’t matter if your team is terrible for a century, it’s still your team. I agree with that completely, trust me. Since 2000, I’ve seen the downfall of nearly every one of my favorite teams. But here’s where I, and several sports fans around the nation, are different: I don’t root for the home team.

Before I go on, I must warn that as a journalist, I shouldn’t be rooting for any team I cover anyway, and I usually don’t. So it makes it easier for me to be the fan I am. With that said, let me just put it simply: I root for the other guys.

That doesn’t mean I root against our local teams. It’s much easier and more fun to write about successful teams, so I want the Kings, 49ers, Raiders, Giants and A’s to win all the time. Just not when they’re playing my boys. And somehow, I feel guilty about that. And I shouldn’t.

I’ve been a Miami Dolphins fan since I was a child. I’ve never been to Miami once, though. It started with a love for Dan Marino’s abilities, and from there, grew into a love for the entire team, even after the legend retired. I was the only Dolphins fan I knew in the town I grew up in in Washington state, and that made me that much more of a die-hard. Knowing that was MY team, and the rest of my surrounding world was against me, made me yearn for their victories that much more.

I’ve been a New York Mets fan since I even knew what baseball was. My grandfather, from New York, had me sit and watch games with him, rattled off historical moments from the team and taught me an appreciation of how hard it is to play in the shadow of the Yankees. This naturally made me a Yankee hater, and seeing the pinstripes succeed and my team fail made me even more staunch of a supporter of the Mets. My stubbornness has kept me a fan to this day.

I root for Notre Dame in college football. Did I go there? No. I went to Gonzaga University, the closest thing to Notre Dame on the West Coast (or at least in Washington, where I grew up). Gonzaga, a Jesuit university, had priests for professors much like Notre Dame. Since I couldn’t afford to go across the country to attend college in South Bend, Gonzaga did the trick, and because Gonzaga didn’t have a football team, Notre Dame was my favorite by default. Now I’m one of the millions across the country begging for another good season, while the rest of the country still hates us. Go figure.

I could rattle off the teams I have a soft spot for even further, but you get the gist. I’m not a hometown fan, bottom line.  I didn’t root for the Seattle Seahawks growing up or the Supersonics, they just didn’t appeal to me. Now I’m a grown man, two states from where I grew up, and the only options locally for me to root for are all having losing seasons. Why would I make a switch?

I’m not a frontrunner. I’m not claiming we should only root for our local teams when they are winning championships. But realistically, it’s not easy to put our hearts and souls into following teams not even playoff bound from Week 1 of the season, while we could enjoy a possible Super Bowl run by someone else.

These are tough times for Northern California sports fans. I’m sorry. I’m just lucky I’m not one of them.

Then again, my teams suck, too, so what the hell am I talking about?