Let’s say someone’s family was in the army, so they moved around a lot from birth, and they didn’t really have a ‘home,’ but they’re into sports—how do they choose their favorite team? Do they just decide to hold off until they move somewhere permanently, and then choose that city’s team as theirs?
A lot of people cheer for their family’s team even if the town they live in has a different team. So you might not cheer for your team, but you’ll cheer for the team you saw Mom and Dad cheer for when you were a kid.
Believe it or not, you can even be a fan of a team in a place you’ve never lived. The rules are made up and the points don’t matter.
Spoken like a true Team Jacob fan. We Team Edward folks have a little more integrity than to just pick a team willy nilly.
Yes and to a non-sportsball fan that’s weird. They all play sportsball, what’s different about that team vs all the others if it’s not your home team?
It’s just one you vibe with. Maybe a friend or family member is a fan. Maybe it’s the rival of the local area. Maybe it’s a team from the first game you watched in person. Maybe you like the mascot (if they have one).
There doesn’t have to be a rhyme or reason, it’s just a game. Find one, follow them, you become invested in them, now you’re a fan. Some people take it more seriously, some people keep it light hearted, and some people don’t care at all.
Because sports teams aren’t just indistinguishable entities; they’re complex organisations with histories, tendencies, and traditions, and that’s before looking at individual players and coaches/managers.
Yeah the players generally aren’t from the city either so it’s all inaccurate to begin with.
Can confirm, Southern cheese-head here and have never been to Wisconsin
Vibes. Pick your favorite colors, your favorite mascot, your favorite city to visit, whatever!
Some people just like birds as mascots. Some sports teams have also changed hands so no rules.
People support teams for all manner of reasons. Hometown is one of them, sure, but you don’t have to live somewhere to support a team there.
I’ve known plenty of people who supported distant teams because they visited once and liked it, because one of their parents support them, or even just because they like the uniform colours or the mascot.
I follow the New Orleans Saints and I’ve never been there.
Who dat?
Who dat! ⚜️
Ugh, I was working at academy in Louisiana when they were in the Superbowl. The entire week leading up to it, management had like 6 different versions of the Who Dat song on a loop.
It was torture.
I strongly believe that you should have a connection to the place that your sports team is affiliated with, but I think you should be very liberal about what you consider a connection. If you’ve moved a lot, it gives you a lot of teams to choose from when you’re choosing your alliances. I think it also makes sense to consider other sorts of connections as well — a grandparent’s alma mater, the team your dad followed when you were a kid. I know a lot of people who recommend watching a league and letting the team choose you, which also seems reasonable, but I prefer the place-ness of sports fandom. The only way to choose a sports team to follow that is objectively wrong is bandwagoning.
My brothers and I were competitive growing up, so we all cheered for different football teams and hoped our team would beat our brothers. I liked the Jets because I was impressed by stories of Joe Namath being rebellious
You said “army”, so what about Army? The first local hockey game I took my kids to was a local college vs army.
Realistically there is a lot of sports that are not the majors. Maybe there is a minor league team or a college team you want to cheer for.
Or heck, why does it even have to be local? My kid is big time into soccer and our country’s teams don’t have much history, so he and his teammates cheer for teams from other countries
You can do whatever you want. You can be fans of multiple teams, or none at all. You can even bandwagon and just be a fan of whomever is winning currently.
In my experience no one picks a team, it is typically geography that does it, or it can be you saw a particular game that made you dig a team. Or someone important to you gets you into a team.
Growing up I was mostly indifferent to sports, I joined the Army was the same until I got married. My wife who spent her formative years in Texas was a huge American football fan of the Dallas Cowboys and the TCU Hornfrogs, so I was indoctrinated.
The Army stationed us in Maryland and we settled here so we became Ravens fans and she never lost her love for TCU.
Now I did love one sport growing up and that was Lacrosse. One drizzly night my friends and I were wondering around the grounds of the University of Virginia and we walked into Scott Stadium, as the gates were wide open and I watched The University of Maryland play UVA in lacrosse and it was fucking unreal watching those guys play. As I was a total townie I had to hate UVA soo…
I fell in love with the UM LAX team and have followed them for decades, as much as I could we not TV and pre-internet days.
I can count the number of ways that having Maryland as my last duty station benefitted my family and how lucky it was.
Geography is your best answer. If you pick a time that plays half their games close to you that means you can go watch games in person once in a while. It means you and strangers on the street likely have in common seeing the same games and so can talk about them. Nothing wrong with a distance team, but you miss out the major advantages of a spectator sport by not choosing the local team.
I dunno, even after we got a team close enough to count as home, my choices have always been arbitrary . Mind you, I don’t really get into team sports, but it’s always fun to have a team for casual conversation.
When I was a kid, it was the Jets, the Eagles, the Vikings or the Bengals, depending on the year and my mood. For us football, obviously. All based on their uniforms or logos. As an adult, it’s the Ravens. I just like their logo better.
Celtics for basketball, just because I liked Larry Bird back in the day.
Hockey, it’s the Rangers for no reason other than the name sticks in my head
Football/soccer, it’s Arsenal. Because it’s easy to remember.
Baseball, I tend to go with whatever Sox team pops in my head, or the Dodgers.
Past that, I couldn’t name a team for other sports tbh
I support St Pauli and AFC Wimbledon and I live in Baden-Württemberg, nowhere near Hamburg or London.
