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?
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.