I'm curious to hear how everybody became a fan of their favorite team. Not just in football but in the 3 major sports. football baseball and obviously hockey. I enjoy asking others Brownies how the hell they became one.

so let's hear it.

why and how?

I became a fan of the Miami Dolphins because my older brother would watch all their games he could. I would eventually start watching, too. Dan Marino was the coolest. I'm still a huge fan of the Miami Dolphins. They're really the only thing in sports I try to keep up with.

This is a weird one. My dad was a bookie so i was not allowed to root for NY teams. This was because most people from NY will bet on NY teams. My first love was football so I tried to come up with a team to root for. The Cowboys and Steelers were too obvious, the Niners were too good, etc... Anyway, one day I saw a commercial(you older people will know this one) and it was from Alcoa. Alcoa had these commercials called "Alcoa Presents: Fantastic Finishes" that showed amazing endings to previous years games. They had Billy "White Shoes" catching a Hail mary pass, shit like that. So this one day they had a Colts highlight. Jon Hand intercepted a ball against the Pats and ran 90 yards for the winning TD...it happened to be their one and only win that year. So that's how i picked the Colts. Plus i liked the horseshoe on the helmet and I also liked the fact that my dad said their new QB(Art Schlister) was a degenerate gambler.

Now i had to pick my other teams for other sports. While I liked the Colts i kinda liked the Seahawks too. Steve Largent was my favorite player and The Kingdome was by far the coolest and loudest stadium in the NFL. Eventually my dad told me it was stupid to root for 2 teams in the same conference so the Hawks were eventually weeded out i the late 80's.

Wuith Seattle still in my head i decided to take on the Sonics and Mariners. They weren't great teams so i avoided the bandwagon label. I still root for them to this day.

Finally, I started getting into hockey in the mid to late 80's. The Blackhawks had by far the best and loudest crowd and I loved Denis Savard. Now i'm stuck with possibly the worst franchise in sports as my favorite hockey team.

That's my story.....

football:

my dad's a giants fan, and i always rooted for them growing up but i never really loved them. then i got madden 94 for sega genesis and i was the patriots every game with bledsoe at qb and butts at rb. dominating. never lost. i got a bledsoe jersey and everything. fell in love. i've been a patriots fan ever since.

funny enough, i had a neighbor who lived next door to me who is 5 years older than me. he went to the university of michigan and i got to go to a game every year for the 4 years he was there. i grew up rooting for michigan but that experience really cemented them in for me. and i said funny enough, because the qb for the patriots now was a wolverine

baseball:

my dad's a mets fan, and he used to bring me to games all the time when i was a kid. then one day my uncle got me some yankees garb, most specifically i remember a hat he put on my head, and told me i had to be a yankees fan if i were smart. that was that.

hockey:

nassau coliseum is 15 minutes from my house. i've been an isles fan forever. my father's old company used to work with the isles, too, so i have tons of old sigs -- norton, krupp, healy, etc...

i've been a fan of the red sox for as long as i can remember. my whole family is, being from massachusetts and the boston area. i remember as a little kid my dad would get me a new sox hat (the net kind) every birthday. i still love them because i'm loyal and i find its incredibly rewarding being a diehard passionate fan for this team.

i'm a patriots fan because they're my home team and i've always liked them, but in the past i've been a casual cowboys fan, mostly because my some of my friends were and i got sucked in (during the dynasty years) and probably because they were good at the time, i'm not really sure i was pretty young. i hate them now though.

i'm a notre dame fan because i grew up watching them every saturday when i was little and i became enamored with the myth and legend behind notre dame . Also, i never really supported any other collegiate teams.

for soccer i support arsenal because i lived in london for a year, but my gf is still trying to get me to like newcastle.

hockey and basketball i dont care much about but in the past i've liked the celtics, bruins, bulls (jordan), and the penguins (lemuix).

Broncos-1 name, John Elway
Ducks-local
USC Trojans-local
Seattle Sonics-Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton
Dodgers-my uncle got me into baseball, and theyre also local

football: went to my first bills game when i was 5.
hockey: I actually started out a rangers fan because they were the only games I could watch where I grew up...but after moving to Buffalo in the early 90's, I kind of got caught up in the whole Mogilny/LaFontaine spectacle. It's really hard not to be a Sabres fan living in Buffalo.
baseball: Pirates b/c andy van slyke was from my hometown. Man am I regretting that one.

If you grow up in Alaska, you have to be creative. My parents are from Minnesota, and they went to grad school at the U, so I am a big Gopher fan in all sports.

I'm a big Twins fan. After the 1991 world series (greatest thing I've ever watched on TV) there was no turning back.

The Timberwolves sucked when I started to get into basketball, so I saw David Robinson and thought he was awesome (fall of 1989?), and he gave a really good interview afterwards, and I've been a humongous Spurs fan since then.

I've never been into the Vikings, I think because my dad has convinced me that they led to the downfall of the Gophers. I like the Broncos, I suppose.

I'm sorry for you, man.

Im from the detroit area.
I like the Tigers, Pistons, Lions and Red Wings.



Im quite the storyteller.

because they're 0-2? *shrug* .. a rough start. they still have the rest of the season

Ive always supported the Spurs because I support Tottenham Hotspur, plus I was always a huge Admiral fan.

Hockey I bought an Anaheim starter hat coz I liked the look of them, so I supported them

Baseball, I dont really have a team, kinda same in football.

This is basically how people in my neck of the woods would decide their teams.

I could have sworn I made this thread a long time ago, but I can't find it. Maybe it was on RM1.

Anyhoo, I watched a lot of football and basketball when I was a kid in the 80s. My dad was a Niners fan, but he also liked the Broncos. Super Bowl XXIV, of course, faced those two teams, and that's when the fandom was really secured. (Rough time, huh). He also demanded that I hate the Dallas Cowboys (obviously), but that never lingered, and besides, there was a much more worthy team to hate.

In basketball, I was a big fan of the 80s Celtics (Bird, McHale, Parrish, those were the days). This should mean that I hate the Lakers, but oddly enough I've merely respected them, even to this day. Guys like Magic and Worthy will do that, I guess. I'm still a Celtics fan first and foremost, too bad they suck now. I also like the Pistons because they were hot shit in the Bad Boys days on the school playground. All of our parents wanted us to root for Portland when they met in the playoffs because they were a nearby team, but we rebelled. Then I went to college in Portland during the Jailblazer years, so my hatred for them escalated. I have a small soft spot for the Sonics because of that.

I started to get into baseball hardcore in the early 90s, and because I liked the Celtics it moved over to another Boston team, the Red Sox. But then I really started to not care much about baseball in general, so my fandom here is not that strong.

College is really sporadic for me--not going to a big school didn't help at all. I don't have a dog in the BSU-Idaho rivalry because the number of people I know from both schools is about 50/50.

I tend to like Michigan, Texas, and Oregon and dislike Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Oregon State. A good friend of my dad's is from Nebraska and a huge Huskers fan, so that had a little bit of impact. But really, there's not one team I feel strongly about on the college level.

Nebraska Football - What can I say? I grew up in Nebraska.

Chicago White Sox - I was a huge Bo Jackson fan when I was little because I was the Raiders in Tecmo Bowl.

Raiders - See Above

I'm indifferent with basketball and hockey.

Another boring story:

I'm from Boston, growing up sports was always on the TV and I was always going to games with my family. So because of that Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins.

I'm a fan of the three Cleveland teams because in my spare time I like to jump rope with barbed wire, take baths in boiling hot water, and bang my head against unforgiving concrete surfaces.

And I went to tOSU, so of course I like them.

boring....live in nj, rangers yankees giants and nets whoopy

I live in Buffalo.

My dad was born in 1950 in the BRonx, NY. for some ungodly reason, he chose the Brooklyn Dodgers over the yankees, sparing our family from years and years of unbridled joy and pinstripe happiness....thanks dad!

When I asked dad why we like the Rams way way back when, he just told me since he liked the LA dodgers he might as well like the LA rams...again, thanks Dad.

My entire family, uncles and cousins, all are die hard Dolphins fans, so I took that up with them and got myself 2 fav football teams to make me sad

The Knicks I like because my best friend was a knicks fan, and he got me interested in hoops.

Same best firend got me into ND football too.

NJ Devils, god I love this story, I got into for a girl. A passionate night of doin it in matching Devils jersies made me a fan for life....even after the broad.

thats it. thats how I got saddled with all this misery

dolphins - dan marino..also one of my best friends growin up was a fan..so we watched the games all the time when they were on tv

yanks - my dad grew up watchin the yanks all his life..huge mantle fan, diehard as they come....i grew up with the yanks..went to see them all the time..even when they sucked