Rooting for the Bad Guys

but then I realize I’d be a pretty big hipocrite, seeing as I’m a huge Patriots fan.

But often pick bandwagon teams in the MLB and NFL when mine falls out of contention.

I also have a strange love for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Latched onto the Mariners in 04.

If by “only root for Seattle area teams” you mean “never root for any other team”, then no. But if you mean “Seattle teams always get rooting-preference in contests with other teams” then yes. I really liked the Chargers for awhile because they’ve had the best chance of stickin’ it to the east coast teams. But most of their stars (Merriman, Rivers, Jackson) are douchey or unlikeable.

1. Seeing the 2005 NFC Championship game in person
2. 2004 Red Sox playoff run
3. 2007 Red Sox playoff run
4. Seeing the 2006 Seahawks-Cowboys playoff game in person
5. Seahawks 1983 playoff win at Miami

I’ve loved the M’s for as long as I can remember (back in the 90’s) as baseball was my first true passion. I didn’t know if the team was good or not in the standings until the late 90’s to early 00’s when I started to pay attention to that, I just rooted for the players who I loved, not caring about the bigger picture of an entire season. I cried when we traded Griff.

I was also a huge Sonics fan at a young age, watching the Glove, Sweet Lew, and Ray Ray. I was in 6th grade for that last playoff run and loved how the team came together with all of the role players doing exactly what was asked (Fortson, Antonio Daniels, and etc.). Even Jerome James had a good playoff series.

I’ve also been a Canucks fan from a pretty young age, adopting them when I went with my parents to the figure skating championships in Vancouver. My loyalty to the team has grown with each playoff run, watching Luongo and Turco battle it out in the Canucks/Stars series of several years ago and recently watching the hated Blackhawks dispose of my Nucks two seasons in a row.

I became a Hawks fan passively in 2003 and aggressively after attending the 2004 Rams playoff loss as a 6th grader. My parents bought a 4 game pack for the 05’ year and the Super Bowl run had me hooked. The Hawks are now my favorite team.

out of the NE area, are bandwagon. You may not like it, but that part of the price of being a Sox fan. Same with teams like the Yankees, Cowboys, Raiders, Lakers and so on.

And to your point that Seahawks start attracting bandwagon fans again, I ask, who cares? If someone comes to the Seahawks because they are successful, then so be it. Time will tell if they become real fans or stay simply bandwagon. Times like we’ve just come through and the better part of the 90s definitely cull the herd. But tell me again why I should care if someone is here only for the good times? Again, time will tell and for those that stick through it, think and thin, I say good on you. Welcome and glad you’re with us. Am I provincial? Yes. Do I wear a chip on my shoulder? Yes. Do I give a rip about a swell of fans during the good times? Hell no, fuck off. Been through too much. This is one man’s opinion, as unpopular as it may be.

…so I consequently hate all baseball fans. :)

but the family team will always be the Kansas City Chiefs. With the Seahawks being in a separate conference (now), it’s been easy to root for both teams, but the end of November will be a difficult time for me when the Chief’s play at Qwest!

Seem to remember the 92 season very well. Became a fan because a family friend had season tickets and they’d take me to a few.

Any affiliation to any other team was pure bandwagon. I enjoyed the Mariners run and Sonics runs, but immediately fell off once they started to stink. Other sports just don’t do it or bore me to death. On the other hand I can watch any football game, pick a team, and immediately start cheering for them. I don’t know, there’s something about football that just sucks me in.

and a denver fan if i get rich i will bring a NBA team to seattle and speand lots of cash

At least for the sports I actually watch: Seahawks, Mariners and Sounders. I’m also a UW alum, so Husky anything when it comes to college sports. But I’m also a huge hockey fan, and we don’t have a team, so I’m a Penguins fan (which is an interesting dichotomy, because I’ve always hated the Steelers, even before XL).

I’m a proponent of having 2nd and 3rd favorite teams, just to have a little variety and spread the love around. Unless they’re playing the Seahawks, I will always root for the Packers.

Johnny, I’m sure that if I ran into you at a Seahawks game, we’d have a great time screaming our guts out cheering for the ‘Hawks. But if I saw you wearing that Sox jersey at Safeco, you’d get a death stare, some heckling, and maybe a little “accidentally” spilled beer on your shoes. Such is the nature of fandom.

After Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS:

At the 2005 NFC Championship:

But I became an official Seahawks fan the day Mike Holmgren was hired. Yeah, I was a 49ers fan, but baseball was (and still is) the sport I lived for and football was something that got me through the offseason. So after Holmgren was hired and I had a reason to get excited for the local team, I jumped on board and have never looked back. I love the Seahawks and will never stray away.

Basketball is tough because I grew up through the Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, Kendall Gill, Nate McMIllan, Sam Perkins, and Detlif Schrempf era. They were the first winning team I ever experienced and absolutely loved watching them play. However, basketball allegiance to Seattle might be forever dead after the Clay Bennett heist. It’s not so much Bennett that irks me, it’s David Stern and the other crony owners who had the power to stop Bennett from hijacking basketball in Seattle. I want to completely write off the NBA, but I have lived in Utah over the last 6 years and Deron Williams has been magnificent to witness. I am a full-fledged Jazz fan now and I don’t know what I would do if the Sonics were awarded franchise again.

So basically, I understand your plight of being a Red Sox fan in the Northwest. There are things that happen in life that draw you to a sport and team. It’s not something you always have control over and most of it can be blamed on the local teams not doing a good job at attracting local fans.

And I miss living there.

But I became a Seahawks fan when I got older some time around 2003-04. I moved to Washington in 2005, which is the year we went to the Super Bowl.

I’ve never latched on to any NBA team so I can’t say I was a diehard Sonics or Warriors fan.

MLS I don’t root for the Sounders (I don’t hate them either). Toronto FC came first, I liked the new stadium and I liked the logo so I went with them and I’m still going strong into year 4 despite no playoffs and many many nightmares involving Ty Marshall, Jeff Cunningham, and Nick “Brian Russell but worse” Garcia.

I have family from both my mom and my dad’s side who live/lived there and my dad was born in Michigan so I root for them instead of the Canucks or a CA team.

Why do we care so much when our team loses?

Why do we care so much when they win? They don’t send us a check at the end of the week. They don’t send us a ring at the end of the year.

It’s obviously a personal experience that is completely subjective and unique to each individual… so why do I care?

I wasn’t old enough to completely appreciate what 83-84 meant to the city but I understood that this was supposed to be my team. By the time I knew how much I loved being a Seahawks fan the team was terrible…but I enjoyed the fact that I didn’t root for my dad’s team, the easy to band-wagon 49ers of the 80’s and 90’s, and I enjoyed the personal satisfaction I took from having the conviction to make it through 1992 and the gems of the early nineties.

I didn’t bandwagon the Cowboys like my freshly minted re-Hawks fan brother or for some unimaginable reason bandwagon the Steelers, like my other, youngest, ill-conceived brother.

I had a team. It was terrible. But it was MY team. And no matter the record. Nobody could take that away from me. Well nobody not named Ken.

And I loved being a part of the atmosphere at a home game. I love the controlled chaos of 60,000 maniacs all screaming for the same frenzied reasons. I love the instant brotherhood with complete strangers… sure a couple of pints helps.

And then they got good. And I felt further satisfaction through my perceived convictions.

What I’ll never understand is the desire of a local with zero ties to a distant team, like Pittsburgh, Dallas, or BOSTON, attending and rooting for the enemy. Sure the team won once, or had great players, but aside from enjoying the current king of the hill, or the players that will inevitably retire… where’s the personal benefit?

I liked the 49ers players, but no matter how high Roger Craig kicked, he didn’t play for MY team.

Sure the villain is fun to play, but if you’re not all-in, and you go to Mariner games as a Mariner fan when they’re winning or not playin your “real” team… (I hate to say this to a fine contributor of content here)…

You aren’t a villain… you’re a douchebag bandwagoner.

But that’s not as bad an insult as it might sound.

I’m a douchebag too.

I’m just not a bandwagoner.

I only got into Football when I moved to Uni in Dublin with a guy that was a huge Bears fan. Without any regional connections to anywhere in the States, the birth of my Seahawks fandom comes from a rather embarrassing background, I liked running Shaun Alexander behind Walt and Hutch in Madden! Played the game and had my friend explain the rules for about two months, and by the time the season rolled around I had built up an affinity for the Hawks. The fact that it was a Superbowl year cerainly roused further interest, I lament the fact that the Superbowl run happened when I wasn’t so invested in the team as I am now. Beating Dallas the year after certainly meant a lot more to me than any of the 05 games. I went to Qwest for the first time last year, amazing experience. I guess what I’m driving at is you don’t need to live regionally to love a team. Staying up until 4am every Sunday to watch the Seahawks coombust last year surely lends that some credence?!

No other sport was big in my family so I went regionally with the Mariners and Sonics ..R.I.P.
I flirted with the Braves in the early 90’s but it soon died out due to my hatred of people with the name Chipper.

I have lived in Central NY my whole life and root for teams on the east coast except for the Seahawks. My brother who is 8 years older than me was a Steelers fan. I was thus a Steelers fan too, until my favorite player, Franco Harris became a Seahawk. I have remained loyal to the Seahawks ever since.

I don’t really care what anyone else roots for, why, how, or for how long. I don’t really care what anyone else thinks of my rooting interests. Absolutely none of it requires justification, and certainly not justification within the bounds of some bizarre and extremely arbitrary rules that people seem to construct for this stuff. None of your rooting interests are accountable to me in the slightest. Vice versa goes without saying.

But all the same, it’s fascinating. Just about every possible perspective and angle on fanship has been explored here.

I’m a bit of a bandwagoner myself. Started really watching football in 2005, at which point I had a soft spot for quite a few teams, including the Hawks, Jaguars, Texans and Saints. Ended up picking the Hawks, mostly because of Seattle, but their quality was surely a tipping point.

I don’t watch other American sports, well maybe a bit of MLS where the Sounders are my favorite if anyone is, but since I’m not a Seattle native or even American citizen you can imagine my allegiances in sport lie elsewhere. Most significantly with the Rotterdam football club Feyenoord.

I lived in Calgary when they won the Stanley Cup back in 89. Lenny Mcdonald was a hero :)

…on splitting the four-game set. Your team certain showed more fight and hustle than my boys did.