How do People Choose Teams to Root For?

Dear Sports Fan,

How do people choose a team to root for?

Thanks,
Meng


 

Dear Meng,

That’s a great question! It must seem somewhat unclear, especially in a big city like New York where there are many people from all over the country and world and where there are multiple local teams in most sports. I’ll do my best to break this down for you:

Primary Reasons:

  • Heredity — If you are a child of sports fans, they start indoctrinating you at an early age. There’s baby clothing, hats, and pennants. They take you to games, which is fun for any number of reasons that don’t involve sports but which gets associated in your mind with the home team. You learn to not bother Daddy and Mommy while they are watching their favorite team and that if you are in the room, you have to root with them!
  • Location — Most places in the country have a clear regional alliance with a set of sports teams. If you grow up in Western Pennsylvania you root for the Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates. If you grow up in Utah, you’re going to root for the Jazz. If you grow up in New Orleans, you are a Saints and Hornets fan. Why? Because they are the only games in town!

Heredity and Location probably account for 80% of all the sports allegiances. But, there are always oddballs like me whose parents didn’t have any strong allegiances (except to the Brooklyn Dodgers, but that’s another story…) and who grew up in an area like Central New Jersey where there were no clear home teams in some sports. When that happens, people tend to fall back on…

Secondary Reasons:

  • Style — It is rare, but sometimes a team will play with such panache that their actual play attracts fans. Even more rare is a team that plays so poorly that they repel fans. This was the case with my favorite hockey team. I started watching Hockey seriously in 1993-94 and even though I was from New Jersey, I quickly decided that I could not in good conscience root for the New Jersey Devils. Their strategy in those days was to compensate for their lack of skill by playing a rigidly disciplined, passive, and defensive style of hockey that involved negating their opponents skill by hanging onto their shirts the whole game… meanwhile, over in Pittsburgh, the Penguins were playing a wide open, offensive game. They tried to beat you 9-8 instead of 1-0. They were fun to watch and I soon became a fan. Other examples of teams whose style could have attracted fans are the Philadelphia Flyers on the 1970s (they beat their opponents bloody,) the Dutch national soccer team of the late 60s and early 70s who pioneered the “Total Football” style, or the Brazilian national soccer team of the… well… just about anytime…
  • Bandwagon — Sometimes it’s not about how a team plays, but how well they do. Most people enjoy rooting for a winning team, so winning teams tend to have more fans. There was a pretty cool article about this the other day on The Big Lead that showed that Super Bowl winning football teams see a 4% increase in fans identifying them as their favorite team in the year after they win. If you know someone who is a Lakers, Yankees, and Cowboys fan, this is probably why.[1]
  • College — This one is pretty straight forward. When it comes to College sports most people root for their Alma Mater. Go Rutgers!
  • Friendship — When you watch sports with a good friend, as long as it doesn’t go against your own favorite teams, you begin to pull for the teams they root for. Over time, these topical rooting experiences add up. If you don’t have a favorite curling, swimming, or netball team, maybe you adopt theirs.
  • Video Games — Believe it or not, I think a lot of people root for teams at least in part because they enjoyed playing as them in a video game. Sports video games are a great way to get into a sport that you’re not familiar with and while playing them you do develop a relationship with the team you most often play as.

Hope this answered your question,
Ezra Fischer

 

 

 

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Also stop being friends with them.

Now that I'm a Dad Should I Try to Like Sports for my Son?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’ve never been a big sports fan, but this is my first Father’s Day and I’ve been feeling like I will be depriving my son if I don’t raise him with sports in his life. What can I do to introduce a little sports to his life?

Thanks,
Kurt


 

Dear Kurt,

Happy Father’s Day and congratulations on being a new father!!

I don’t think you should feel like you have to feign sports fandom for your son. He’s going to have lots of influences during his life and it’s far more important that they be honest than contain sports. That said, there are a few things that you might want to think about doing.

You might want to encourage your child to play sports. Oddly you don’t really have to be a sports fan to enjoy playing sports. So buy some balls and frisbees and sticks and even if your kid is too small to really use them, you can kind of swing him at them. If he seems to take to any of it, encourage him! Participating in team sports from a young age is a wonderful way to build confidence, make friends, and get stronger. It’s also a big lesson on how to deal with success and failure. Your son will definitely learn how to win and how to lose from his parents even if the winning and losing for them is not sports related. Be a good winner and a better loser.

The other piece of sports that a child often picks up from his or her parents is who to root for. If you don’t have any sports allegiances, hopefully you live in a one team region. My parents weren’t fans of any sports teams (except the ones my brother and I were on) when I was growing up and partially as a result[1] of that, I root for a hockey team a thousand miles from where I live, a basketball team from my home state, and don’t have a favorite baseball or football team. If there is a local team in your area, why don’t you buy your kid a hat. If he ends up liking sports than he will have the credibility of a true fan — baby pictures in his team’s uniform!

Hope you have a great day,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. But mostly because I grew up in Central New Jersey where the allegiances are as twisted as a clover-leaf highway entrance.