Sports Loyalty

Coming to you LIVE from the antenatal unit at our local hospital, where the wife is cashed out awaiting for active labor to start, and yours truly is working on a 24 oz. coffee from Wawa (unofficial sponsor – Hoagiefest is here again!) while keeping the noise down and killing time. Our future daughter/soon to be newest member of the Logical Betting Cast of Characters, is apparently already running late for things already, getting her father ready for life to come. Initial plan – get ready first, crack beer, wait for the ladies to finish getting ready. And I’d be remiss without a monster shout out and congrats to Mojo and Mrs. Mojo, who also welcomed a baby girl into the world this week. Fah T, who also recently had a son, has been sending inappropriate texts and emails to us for three days, though has “classily” dropped that act for the last day while the wife has been in labor. He would have been included in the LB “Monster Shout Out” if it weren’t for those little tidbits he’s been sharing. I’d say he’ll be back at it sometime around August 6th, then will quit again once Mojo and I spend a little time showing him what fathers do to people who f*** with their daughters.

Moving along. Been meaning to write about sports loyalty for a long time. Mojo and I kicked it around during our podcast, and now finally getting around to it, as sports loyalty issues are about to become a part of our family. We are going to have a future podcast on this topic with someone whose non-torn loyalties befuddle me to this day… long story short, she is quite seriously dating someone who works for the Phillies and is a lifelong, die hard Y*****s fan. During the World Series last year, not only did she go to a couple of games, but also said she had literally no rooting interest in who won, and was “happy either way.” After a half hour of taking my often unfair and accusatory questions, she accepted my apology and said she would come on to talk about it. So now that I’ve introduced this to all of you, I’m sure you will see it sometime around October.

So the topic of sports loyalty came up for us shortly after we learned the wife was pregnant. Conversation was awhile ago, but to paraphrase…

Me: So which teams does the baby become a fan of, other than Michigan?
Wife: I’m not sure (still at least pretending she doesn’t know how this is going to go).
Me: I think she should be able to be a fan of whoever she wants.
Wife (dead serious): Oh, she can root for whoever she wants, as long as she’s wearing an Eagles jersey.

My first thought was, “why do you want to torture the child before she even knows what football is,” but, seeing as I had 7 more months of pregnancy to go, I decided to leave that be. I know I’m safe now, too, cause if I don’t read these to her for editing, the wife doesn’t read LB unless she has a guest spot. Anyways, given that a friend of ours once said about our daughter, “your girl will be the only one with more jerseys in her closet than dresses,” you can see where this is going. I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that, living out of state from my teams, my daughter is more than likely going to be siding with her mother on most things. It’ll be interesting to see if she goes the way of Penn State since they’re the college team around here. If she even thinks about N**** D***, she’ll never see the light of day.

I’m pretty sure I’m ripping this idea off of some other writer somewhere, but I’ll take the plagiarism risk and give you my own rules for sports fandom. These rules are ironclad, and of course reflect my completely unbiased, neutral, objective, intelligent, thought out, rational, wise beyond my years thinking on the topic.

1. Unless one of the exception criteria are met, one must root for one’s hometown team. No bandwagon jumping (see also, Phillies and Red Sox hats, pink) or changing teams.

Do I even need to explain that? Tricky when it comes to college sports, though. In that case, you go with the school you attended first. If you didn’t go to college, or went to a small school, then you go with any of the local teams, your choice. Around here, that’s Penn State or Rutgers, in the D, Michigan or Michigan State. If a member of your immediate family went to one of the schools or is a fan for an acceptable reason (e.g., for Baby Girl Mojo, Mojo didn’t go to Michigan, but it was the local team, and Mrs. Mojo is a Sparty grad), you can choose one of those.

However, I’m sure many of you are thinking, what if I live in rural Wyoming? Ahhh, my dear child, so smart of you to ask. Let’s just get to the exceptions. Note that, other than the “adopting a team” Rule 3a below, these rules apply only to professional sports, not college. Once you have your college team, you’re with them, zero exceptions.

a. If there is no team in a given sport in your hometown (e.g., hockey in Seattle), please follow the guidelines below, in this order:

1. Select the team which the closest member of your immediate family roots for, e.g., your father grew up in San Jose, roots for the Sharks, done.

2. If not applicable, root for the team your favorite player plays on; however, take note, if said player leaves this team for any reason (retirement, trade, etc.), you may NOT, under ANY circumstance, jump ship. Once you’re on, you’re on for life. So choose wisely, as they said in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

3. If you don’t have a favorite player, you may choose any team that was not in the finals of that sport last year. So for example, if you’re getting on the NHL bandwagon this year, don’t live in an NHL town, and don’t have a favorite player, you may choose any team not named the Chicago Blackhawks or Philadelphia Flyers. This is to avoid bandwagon jumping at all costs. Exceptions to the rule because too many people jumped on when these teams were good, and now they have too many annoying fans with no ties to the team: Dallas Cowboys, Y*****s, N**** D*** football, Los Angeles Lakers. The Miami Heat are applying to join the crowd, and we should know in about 3 years if they made it. But for now, you can jump on, though I suggest you do it quickly, because that bandwagon is going to get awful crowded, awful quick. But the chicks on there are probably smoking hot.

b. Choose the team your immediate family roots for, e.g., parents or grandparents, but no further. Respect the blood line.

This explains how I became a Bears fan and, thank God and my paternal grandparents, avoiding being a Lions fan. Story goes like this… my mom grew up in Detroit, dad in Ohio. Mom really could care less about football growing up, Dad was a die hard Browns fan. Well, we used to spend some time in the summers and holidays down in Ohio with my grandparents, who, having grown up in Chicago, were die hard Bears fans. Seeing as grandparents don’t know the word “no,” and sufficiently spoiled me to death, I got on the Bears bandwagon just before their 1985 Super Bowl win. Hasn’t been a lot of good times since, but I’m hanging in there from quite the long distance.

And folks, that’s it. If you came up with your favorite team in another way, I’d love to hear your reasoning, and if you know me at all, it’s highly likely I’ll tell you you’re wrong. Now, let’s say you meet multiple criteria here, ala my soon to be daughter. It’s really up to her who she makes her primary team in each sport. She’ll probably be a lot like her father, and have adopted teams (I hope), e.g, roots for the Phillies and Tigers. But if you’re in that torn situation and looking for guidance, I highly recommend that you not just pick the best team. True tie-breaker is the hometown team, but it’s up the discretion of the child/person at hand. That said, if she doesn’t take one of my teams, she’s grounded. Let’s move on to the other rules of sports fandom, yeah?

2. Under no condition are you to wear any other teams gear.

The only exception to this rule is a baseball cap, which can be used to show support to the hometown team or other teams you happen to like. This must be justifiable, e.g., I have a Red Sox hat I wear on occasion to show my time in Boston and a Phillies hat now. For some unholy reason, Mojo and my buddy V wear Ys hats… Mojo thanking the Ys for the free tix while he was a cadet at West Point (it sickens me to say this, but that’s pretty cool), and V because he loves Steinbrenner, RIP. Both profess first loyalty to the Tigers and would root for them over the Ys without question, making this acceptable. You may also wear a cap for fashion reasons or sentimental value, e.g., ZWR likes to wear a Hartford Whalers hat because he loved the Whale.

But, Logical Betting, you ask, what about the children??? Dear reader, I have your answer. They can wear what you put on them for awhile, duh. But after age 7, you’re going to know where their loyalties lie, and it’s on you as a parent to keep that stinking Ys gear off them, and litter their closet with nothing but gear from the acceptable teams, e.g., Phillies and Tigers… oops, I mean Tigers and Phillies, in our case. After that, they can choose to wear what they want. Remember, though, they’re just kids, and don’t always know any better. Present them with the acceptable choices, go from there, and pray to God they don’t listen to their mother on that one. Oh, that’s just me. Sorry.

Story time! I absolutely tore into a Tigers fan acquaintance for wearing a Dodgers shirt at a Dodgers game. He said he was in L.A., his wife was a Dodgers fan, etc. My first question, “so are you a Dodgers fan?” J.B. was there and loves to tell this story, I basically had the guy whimpering with his tail between his legs and demanded he renounce his Tigers fandom. That is a dude who can’t tell his wife, “uh, honey, I like the Tigers, is that okay?” Seriously. My wife was mocking him, too. He deserved it. Calm down, boy, we’re having a baby in a little bit. Back on topic.

3. Additional teams may be adopted into your sports fandom, though may never surpass your love for your first team. Please use the following guidelines:

a. A member of your immediate family (spouse, parent, grandparent) is a die hard fan of the team. For example, I am a member of the Southeast Michigan Browns Backers, supporting my dad and his team just a notch below my Bears. That, and if you heard the podcast, I freaking love what these guys do for charity and for fellowship. So say you grew up in Michigan, moved to Philly, and had a daughter, and she decided she actually wanted to experience winning the Stanley Cup one day after already choosing the Flyers using the rules above, she could adopt the Red Wings so she doesn’t spend her whole life trying to subtract the year from 1974 and listening to her father say, “back in 1997, before you were born…”

b. You move from your home town. I’ve really only seen this done consistently with baseball. For whatever reason, it seems to have the most flexibility on this, probably because the season is so long, it dominates the laid back summer season, and it’s such a chilled out sport. I did it temporarily with the Red Sox and now again with the Phillies, but never even had the slightest inclination towards the other sports, though I do hope the local teams win when mine don’t, since it’s so good for the community. When you live in die hard sports towns, it’s almost impossible not to follow the local teams. I have family that moved to Florida, and they have no problem sticking with the Detroit teams cause people there are so transient and have large groups of fans that only come back on board when the teams are winning. Here, in the D, and in Boston, they die hard no matter how bad the teams get. I mean, think about it, if the fans in the D weren’t really loyal, the Lions would have no one left. But in reality, if you love sports like I and my ilk, you’re gonna be listening to sports talk and reading stuff about the local teams. 3b here allows us to do that without being traitors.

c. Your favorite player switches teams. Now, see how this is different from actually switching loyalty? You can ADOPT the new team, but can’t make them your fave team. In other words, if you were a huge Chris Bosh fan living in Toronto, you could root for Miami now, but not if they play the Raptors. I would have used Cleveland and LeBron here, but I’m pretty sure no Cavs fans are rooting for Miami. Not something I have experienced myself. I would ask the wife about when Michael Jordan, her all time favorite athlete, went to the Wizards, but she is in a happy, sleeping medicine induced trance. Maybe I’ll ask when she’s pushing. Ut oh, she’s stirring… I asked… she just mumbled annoyingly, “nut uh” then something about “stupid…” I think she was referencing the Bulls management. We’ll get a ruling on that one later. For the record, she fell right back asleep, so I’m not as big a d-bag as that may have sounded. And she did ask what I was doing before I asked her, so it’s not like I woke her up or anything. And yes, I’m writing this so I can prove it to her later.

Here are me and the wife’s fave teams, to show how it’s done:

Baseball

Me – Tigers (grew up in the D), adopted Phillies (live in Philly).
Wife – Phillies (grew up in Philly), adopted Tigers (married LB).

NFL

Me – Bears (grandparents), adopted Browns (Dad)
Wife – Eagles, Eagles, Eagles, Eagles… adopted Eagles again.

NBA

Me – Pistons
Wife – Sixers (she likes certain NBA players, but never adopted a team)

NHL

Me – Red Wings
Wife – Flyers

College

Both – Michigan (attended U of M)

So there you go. Simple, right? I would love to expand further on the topic, but just got back from a bagel run for the wife, and was informed we are seeing some more contractions, so hopefully this little lady will find her way into the world on my lucky number day, 22. By the time I post this, I will be reading to her from the Paws goes to the Tigers game book from Mrs. J.B. to try and suade her my way. Email me with scenarios and questions about loyalty, and be looking for the podcast when I can track my friend down.