OK, so my parents don't care about sports really, except my mother will root for whatever team I root for. Add this to the fact that I moved a decent amount when I was a kid, and I really didn't get into sports until I was about ten or eleven. I'm now in college. As a result, I haven't experienced a lot of heartbreak from my hometown teams. The Patriots are the NFL team of the decade, the Red Sox won two World Series, and the Celts are a perennial contender. I don't really follow hockey. The only real heartbreak from these teams was Aaron fuckin' Boone in 2003 and Super Bowl 42. Those hurt for a while. That said, there are two teams I will live and die for: 1. Team India in international cricket. Goddammit, where to start with these guys. Sometimes they're brilliant - see the Natwest series from 2002, when India chased down a score of 324 to win (which is huge in one day cricket), and finally got there in the very last over. Sometimes they suck (many, many matches since then). Add in a dose of nationalism and let simmer for 19 years. It's practically an Indian tradition to talk about how much your team sucks when they suck - you think you have a love/hate relationship with your team? Try burning effigies of them and vandalizing their houses when they lose. 2. The Georgetown Hoyas - I go to every game I can as a student ticket holder, and am a dedicated follower of CasualHoya. Last year when we crashed in the middle of the season and lost in the first round of the NIT? Guess who watched all the games. Luckily, we are really really good this year and I hope we don't fuck it up.
Ugh--I can already hear all you jackals in true whine-mode with your "but MY team can't buy their players, MY team will NEVER win!!" Whatever--it's just as hard to be on the side of the team that always wins as it is to be on the side of those that always lose. At least when your team is expected to lose, it's fun when they get on a roll and win. For me, I take shit when they win and take shit when they lose. Surprise, surprise, I'm a Yankees fan through and through. Sure, we win championships and it's always fun to be on the side of the team that everyone loves to hate. Whether you like it or not, the Yankees are a force, even when they're in complete suck mode. That's the good part. The bad part is that I'm a baseball fan first, an idealist purist even. So all the "they buy their team," "team of all-stars," a-ROID" nonsense actually rings true with me. When they screwed over Tino Martinez for Giambi, I was pissed. When Andy Pettitte left the first time, I was angry. And by the time we bought Damon and Abreu, I was damn near ready to go to the dark side and root for Pedrioa, Lowell, and Dice-K. But how can I turn my back on the men who let me stay up past my bedtime for the first time ever (WS vs. Dodgers), taught me to curse while sitting in the third base stands and the people around me heckled the newly-traded Ricky Henderson? These men who teased me with years of Winfield and Mattingly and never gave me a WS win to rub in my friends' faces? Who I didn't see win live until I was 25 and had to go to Fenway to see it happen? The men who got me laid in '96 because I wore my Pagliarulo shirt out to the bars to celebrate the win of key farm team players mixed with true baseball legends? No, I could never turn my back on these men, no matter how much they piss me off or how much shit I have to take because I love them. I figure I love them like my family: I will always adore them or defend them, but I don't always like their decisions. But sometimes they really pull through and take care of their little sister here...like this year...as I watched a sweet win in Phillies country. Ahhh, thanks boys, for the bragging rights.
ENGLAND? Try being an English football fan. I have never seen them play anything even closely relating samba football. I have seen them play like a bunch of fairies though. They weren't even in the last major championship. They are so shit its unreal. I don't even watch too much football seeing as I played rugby and now American style football but the English team still makes me want to cry. Also see: 1)English rugby about 90% of the time. Year after year of shit performances makes me a sad boy, despite the fact the perform occasionally. 2)English cricket, same problem as all of the national teams, they are shit the majority of the time but nothing changes because they might put in one good performance. It is so bad being stuck in the the constant optimism/disappointment cycle of being an English national fan.
Same here, grew up a Yankee fan watching my favorite all time player, Don Mattingly. Also grew up a New York Giants fan but my early years was watching Dave Brown at quarterback. Boy did he suck. What team that is killing me right now is the UConn Huskies (where I went to school). I love watching college basketball and not seeing them in the tournament would suck.
Ok. My team is the Browns. Since we came back into the league in 99 we've had TWO winning seasons, ONE playoff appearence (wildcard) and 1,000,000 starting quarterbacks. Essentially we've been pretty much the worst team in the league. It has made Sundays wildly depressing, and football season as a whole one big let down. Yeah, I guess back in 1985-1990 things were a little exciting in Cleveland, but the fans were still let down every year. In this same period the Yankees fucking dominated, being competitive pretty much every year, winning titles, making playoffs, being exciting(or at least as exciting as baseball can be). If you somehow think that is as hard as being a Browns fan you're a ruh-tard. And fuck man, I wouldn't care if every single person in the world hated me if the Browns could win a Super Bowl. Fuck that, "Oh I take shit when they win" bullshit. Doesn't that make it even more enjoyable? I know if the Browns or the Indians pulled one out and everyone gave me shit, I would laugh in all their faces. Forever.
I'm a die-hard Arsenal F.C. and Sharks fan. If I could, I'd buy a season ticket every year to watch the Gunners. They always play with style that is entertaining to watch, even for the neutrals. Historically, they're the third most successful club in English football, in terms of outright top flight league wins (behind Manchester United and Liverpool), though they only have one European Club Competition trophy - the 1970 Fairs Cup - later known as the UEFA Cup. I'd proudly wear my Arsenal kit to a Spurs match (their biggest rivals) at White Hart Lane... This season has been pretty frustrating, since Arsenal are off the pace shown by Chelsea and Manchester United (and were beaten by both those teams over the least 2 weeks). I think I'd remain a supporter through anything. The worst I've felt after a match is a tie between when Arsenal lost 2-1 to Barcelona in the 2006 European Champions League final, after Lehmann got himself sent off within the first ten minutes AND Campbell still rose from a corner and gave Arsenal the lead just after the half-hour mark and they STILL lost, and when Suker hit the post in the penalty shootout in the 2000 UEFA Cup final. The Sharks... well, they're the local rugby side, and now rated as one of the better domestic teams - for many years, up until the 1990's, Natal (as they were known then) had won precisely fuckall, ever, and were not rated to win anything until they won a few Currie Cups in the 1990's - a trophy they won again in 2008. I'll go down to at least one match every season, despite my dislike of crowds. Also, some friends of mine from school played for them, so that also helped. Oh, fuck The Bulls. Assholes.
Ok, I am a die hard St. Louis Rams fan. I can't complain as much as pretty much any Cleveland fan, since the Rams did win a Super Bowl a decade ago, but outside of that, it's been a pretty brutal ride. I was just beginning to like sports the last few years the Rams were in L.A., and those early experiences were absolutely brutal. When Tony Banks and Lawrence Philips are on your team, it's really hard to like watching football. And having to see Steve Young and the 49ers just destroy us every year was fucking brutal. Then they moved to St. Louis, and sucked a few more years, until out of nowhere, they became "The greatest show on turf". Absolutely amazing watching them shred every defense in the league, with Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, and Isaac Bruce. Won one super bowl and should of won another one if Mike Martz wasn't fucking retarded. But that was mostly luck, our retarded front office just got lucky for a change with Warner and Faulk, and the glory days quickly faded. Now our last three draft picks have been #2, #2, and now #1, yet somehow we aren't getting any better. Seeing as our only few good years happened because we started a grocery bagger at quarterback, I really don't have much hope that the Rams are gonna turn it around and start winning any time soon...
You know how in kids movies, there's always a scrappy underdog team, and then one team full of rich or snotty or mean kids who everyone expects to win? It doesn't matter if the ones who consistently win get yet another game, that won't make people hate them any less and their skill will be explained away as having rich parents or something like that. Browns fans get to root for the underdog. Either you get a stunning victory to cheer over, or you've got a great excuse for why the other team beat you (those bastards!) Yankees fans get their team's victories explained away and their losses gloated over. Victories ring hollower, and losses sting more.
Anyone else tired of the "life experience" argument trumping all? Let's get real here. How could being fans of a team that has NEVER won a championship (or has been 100+ years since) be equally as hard as a perennial powerhouse? Yet get to enjoy the satisfaction of a championship win, a lot of fans don't even know what the fuck that feels like. Plus you actually have some ground to stand on when people do talk shit. I really cant wrap my head around the fact that you can't handle criticism when you're team has given you wins.
Yeah, those are movies. You know what happens in the movies? The underdog wins. You know what happens in real life? The underdog loses. Your argument does not hold water man. One of my best friends spent the first 18 years of his life in Manhattan, and is about as die hard Yankees as you can get. You know what happened after the Yankees won the World Series last year? He was beyond happy for the next two weeks. He went celebrating with other Yankees fans for two days. It wasn't hollow for him, it was awesome. World champs, baby. He even ordered the 2009 World Series Champion t-shirt and shit, because you can't buy it here in Hawaii. And then he wore that shirt all the time. This happens for the Yankees a few times every decade. Now the Browns beat the Steelers this year, which was awesome. And fuck yeah I was happy. But I didn't go celebrating or anything, and I pretty much forgot about it by the next day. As a Browns fan, that is as good as it gets. And has happened just as often as the Yankees won the World Series. You can say that one day when they actually do win the Super Bowl it'll be so much better, and you're partially right. But having to wait 50+ years to get to that point ain't fucking worth it.
I'm all kinds of excited for Joe Posnanski's annual "This is the year for the Royals!" column; followed two months later by his "Sigh...another crappy year for the Royals" column. Also annual. Sigh...maybe this year
Um. There will never be a day when I don't root for the Houston Astros, and while it was hard to overcome losing the Oilers, I have come to embrace the "team" that we call the Texans. Maybe next year... Spoiler Oh, and Cubbies - quit crying, already!
#24, Jeff Gordon and the DuPont race team. I know, I know. That's like saying "The Yankees" or "The Lakers." In my defense, I picked Gordon in 1993. His rookie year. Anybody who cares to see a colossal fuck-up of a rookie year (in fact, a 'rookie 18 months' is a better term), go and look up his record when he started. It was abysmal. Think Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder. Why did I pick him? I was 13 and liked the colour of his car. Never let it be said that a frivolous decision won't work out well in the long run.
I have been a fan of the Seattle Seahawks since they became a team. That's all I have to say about that. I'm a larger fan of Notre Dame football. Let the shit-talking commence. National Championship year coming up! Spoiler 2010 Notre Dame Football Schedule Sept. 4 PURDUE Sept. 11 MICHIGAN Sept. 18 at Michigan State Sept. 25 STANFORD Oct. 2 at Boston College Oct. 9 PITTSBURGH Oct. 16 WESTERN MICHIGAN Oct. 23 at Navy (at Meadowlands - East Rutherford, N.J.) Oct. 30 TULSA Nov. 6 Open Date Nov. 13 UTAH Nov. 20 ARMY (at Yankee Stadium - Bronx, N.Y.) Nov. 27 at USC I'm predicting a perfect season. It's a little early, I know. Michigan fans can eat a big fat dick.
I follow two teams ravenously: the Carolina Panthers and the Florida Marlins. I'm also a fan of the Charlotte Bobcats, the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Florida Gators, but I don't follow them nearly as closely. Being a Marlins fan is very...interesting. The team has had a VERY successful start and already has won two World Series. They almost always over achieve. If their pitching matures like it's supposed to, they'll be competing for their third ring in a year or two. But all I ever hear is this: "Hahaha you're a Marlins fan? You must be like the only one!" So? I have to be surrounded by other fans to be a fan myself? If anything, in my mind, this makes it sweeter when the Marlins succeed. As for the Panthers, this should say it all.
I hope every single one of you New York/Boston sports fans are attacked by the homeless. Every single letter of your goddamned posts make me feel like circumcising myself with a fork. In short, go Seahawks, Mariners, and Husky football. Fuck Clay Bennett in the eye with a barbed wire dildo.