People Who Think That I Should Root for a Sports Team

Dear sports nuts,

I'm well aware of what you think. You seem very much convinced that if I don't enjoy watching sports I'm not a real man, and you think that it is inconceivable that I don't have any preferences when it comes to sports teams.

I'll admit that it's true that I'm not very manly (and that I don't care much about that fact), but I'll also say that I have no idea how you decide what sports team to cheer for.

National teams “representing your country” or teams from the region you were born are one thing, I guess I can understand cheering for them. I think it's rather arbitrary like a team just because you happened to be born where they come from, but sure, I still understand the reasoning.

But most people interested in sports root for at least one team that comes from somewhere else entirely. For instance, a lot of people around here have a favourite Spanish or British soccer team and a favourite NHL hockey team, even though they've often never even been to the cities that those teams have in their names.

In those cases there must be some different standard for judging which team is worthy of your admiration. At first I thought that you might just like the team that is the best at what they do, but this is apparently not so. How many times haven't I heard one of you complain about how “your” team is doing extremely badly this season? Obviously you like the team even if they play badly, so skill isn't what interests you.

Then I thought that it might be that you like individual players. I can understand if you respect and admire an athlete's performance. But then I realized how much often players are sold from one team to another. I've watched sports with some of you when you start talking about a great new player newly acquisitioned from a rival team, i.e. a team that you don't like. So clearly it isn't individual players that are important if they can be enemies when they are in another team but suddenly on “your side” when your team buys them.

So, what is it? It's not the geographic origin of the team. It's not the ability of the team or the players. Then what? Is it the team name or colors? I doubt it, since I've never heard any of you sports nuts wax poetic about the beauty of a team name or any combination of colors.

I guess that you at some point in your childhood just arbitrarily picked a team that you like (or a team that your father or brother liked) and then just stuck with it because you need to have someone to cheer for. Watching a ball pass back and forth over a field for an hour or two isn't all that interesting if you don't have any reason to want it to go one way or another. Is that it?

Well, either way you can count on me not "choosing a team" before I find some tangible, definable reason for rooting for some particular team.

Peace and touchdowns,

Marcus