If you have sports related questions, what Crum do you ask?? Since I have been stereotyped as the sports trivia guy I feel I have an excuse to blog on sports related subjects, no questions asked. This shall be my first in a long line of such entries (Mom would say "Not of general interest!!").
I was recently pondering the nature of allegiance towards different teams, schools, players, etc. In this line of thought I came to several different hypotheses.
1. - We gather our allegiances from our parents.
In this thought I have a lot of personal examples. Growing up, and even now, I always find myself cheering for Penn State football. I, however, never attended Penn State, so why do I cheer for them?? Well my father, who ignited my love for sports as a young boy, always watched them and therefore I too became a Nittany Lion fan. I also cheered for his favorite baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and pro football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Now I do see the direct connection. He was born and lived his entire childhood in western Pennsylvania. I was born in Philadelphia, so I also had the PA connection. But why wouldn't I be drawn to the Eagles or Phillies?? Simple, we never watched them play. If it wasn't the Steelers or the Pirates, we didn't watch it!!
2. - Location affects allegiance.
Over the first 18 years of my life I moved around a lot, from Pennsylvania to California, then to Missouri, back to Pennsylvania, and finally to Indiana. Over this period of time I had geographical influences on my sports allegiances. I cheered for the Cardinals while in St. Louis and developed my love for hockey there as well, cheering for the Blues (I now cheer for the Philadelphia Flyers - an allegiance I do claim because it is my birth city). Before moving to Bloomington I knew about Bobby Knight and Indiana basketball, but never was a fan. Having lived here for over 10 years now, I call myself a diehard Hoosier fan when it comes to hoops. The same can be said for my pull for the Colts. Live here long enough and you will go hoarse (pun intended) for the Colts.
3. - There are atypical allegiances.
Do I still root for the Pirates? The answer is no. When I was 13 or 14 the Atlanta Braves came along and defeated the Pirates in the NLCS. From that moment on I was a Braves fan. I guess I figured that if a team could beat the Pirates they had to be good. I found myself becoming a huge Braves fan. I liked their style of play, their manager Bobby Cox, and the fact that they were good with players that came up through their own farm system, not by going out and buying the best talent and biggest names (like the Yankees).
Likewise I cheer for the Florida Gators (you can root for several teams in the same sport, but this is a topic for another entry). Since I was made aware of Steve Spurrier's high octane offense I have loved watching UF football. When my high school's quarterback, Rex Grossman, went to and performed well at UF this just added to my devotion to the Gators. Now that Rex is in the NFL I still find myself pulling for the team and checking each Saturday in the fall to see if they've won.
So what is there to make of all this? Well nothing really. I guess you can pretty much cheer for whoever you want (just ask brother David who always cheers for the opposite of everyone else). I'm just convinced that you don't always control the factors to why you cheer for a particular team. I suppose if I moved to New York City I might even cheer for the Yankees. Wait, who am I kidding, I will always hate the Yankees!!!
4 comments:
Detailed sports talk is not of general interest, however, discussing team allegiances, analyzing why people act the way they do in the stands and on the field, predicting which team will win and why--these are interesting to me.
I would like to challenge you sports fans to come up with a whole new approach to predicting the winners based on mascots, team colors, and geographical location. It would look something like this.
Since horses are cool, any team with a horse symbol or name would be awarded a bonus point.
Next, there would be a "relative strength and ability" factor assigned to each team based on their mascot. Birds, being unable to pick up, much less carry a football, would have a low number. However, since an eagle could easily defeat a cardinal in a bird battle, therefore, the eagle's number would be slightly higher. Vikings can beat any other kind of pirate.
Team colors will also count for points. Really cool colors and color combinations would have higher points than the others. Helmet designs would be an additional factor here. Each of these points will be determined by an objective party--me--and would stand for the season. Therefore, Seahawks would rank at the top while anything with white and purple would rank low.
Finally, location. If we have ever lived in a particular state it gets higher points. Being born in the state gives it extra points. Points will be awarded for each person who was born in any given state and for the lenghth of time of residency. If we attended school in the state it gets credit for that, too. States we think are pretty get higher points than states we don't like.
Based on these three factors--mascot, colors, and location--each team begins the season with a score. In order to predict the winner of any given game simply compare the team scores. You don't even need to watch.
In the case of a tie, the win goes to the cuter quarterback.
Wow, thanks Mom. I was never really in to sports (other than playing them) but I always did think that your contributions to the events were well worth sitting in the living room for (my favorite is the spitting fine on baseball players). I just read an interesting article that Michal had for one of her classes about the culture of football (or rather, how American Football is perfectly modeled after American culture). The article went in depth about the way the individualization of skills contributing to the greater good of the "team" and the utilization of technology to improve the efficiency and strategy of the game.
Good article. I especially like the part where you tell about how you became a Braves fan, although I personally am not a Bobby Cox fan (he always leaves the starting pitchers in too long). And the ending line about the Yankees was great as well. Keep up the pro-Braves, anti-Yankee propaganda.
Anti-Yankee propaganda? Why are you so hateful towards this team. Cause all their fans are bandwagon? I happen to think being a supporter of such an outstanding ball club isn't such a bad thing, and the only reeason to be so anti-yankee is because they're just the best and you don't like your team to be second. And if your so anti-yankee because they have more money than that's just the greed of the players, such as David Justice. All these players get paid quite enough, so they could all be pretty much where ever they want to be. I guess the best just like NY.
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