My Fickle Fandom

In the middle of my childhood, I became a fan of New York sports teams for all of the big-time sports except football. For baseball, it was the Mets. For basketball, it was the Knicks. For hockey, it was the Rangers. Only in football did I somehow go in a different direction, becoming a Pittsburgh Steeler fan toward the end of the Steel Curtain years. When I moved to Arizona in the late 1990s, those loyalties were starting to change. I was already starting to switch my hockey allegiance to the Coyotes by the time I moved to Phoenix, mostly because they put up a good fight before losing to (my least favorite team in all of sports) the Detroit Red Wings in the first round of the NHL playoffs in 1998. In 1999, I rooted for the Mets over the Diamondbacks in the playoffs, but by 2001, I was fully onboard as the Diamondbacks won the World Series. By 2001, I was also rooting for the Suns to do well and, by the time I moved away a few years later, it wasn’t hard to root for the Suns, with Amare Stoudamire, Steve Nash, Shawn Marion, and the crew, over the bottom-feeding Knicks, mired in scandal, horrible play, and miserable personnel decisions. Only in football did I maintain my old loyalty. Though I have rooted for the Cardinals to do well, Pittsburgh was still my team (despite the fact that my first year in Phoenix the Cardinals made the playoffs and then beat the Dallas Cowboys in exciting fashion).

Since moving back to Ohio a few years ago, I’ve seen myself squarely splitting my rooting interests in all but football between my former New York loyalties and my newfound loyalties to Phoenix teams. I’ve found myself claiming association with both the Mets and the Diamondbacks. I’m hovering back to the Rangers over the Coyotes (though that isn’t hard the way the two are playing right now). And then there’s basketball … where it’s been near impossible to go back to the Knicks and just as nearly impossible to stop rooting for the Suns. So, over the last couple of weeks, as news was coming out of the possibility of Mike D’Antoni leaving the Phoenix Suns, I was upset to hear about it. I had been holding onto the hope that that team under D’Antoni could win an NBA championship in the next few years. I saw the news about disagreements between D’Antoni and GM Steve Kerr, I saw the news about overtures from the Bulls, and I frowned … but then, I saw that the Knicks were trying to get D’Antoni as coach and instantaneously my feelings changed. I wanted him to go to New York. The idea of him turning around the Knicks and the possibility of the Knicks contending again excited me. So, when the news came on Saturday that the Knicks had signed D’Antoni as coach, I was excited and happy, not caring (at least for the moment) about what might happen to the Suns.

I wonder, then, what this says about my sports loyalties in particular and the ways in which sports loyalties work in general. My loyalties certainly appear to have a certain amount of fickleness about them. Above all, though, I think this illustrates something about how sports identification relates to regional identities. I’ve spent more of my life in Ohio than all other states put together, but I’ve tended to identify with sports teams outside of Ohio. Growing up, I wanted an identity that tied me to the urban space of New York, from which my dad’s side of the family came, over the rural Ohio town in which I grew up. In Phoenix, I could have claimed some sense of outsider identity by rooting for Ohio teams, but in that case I identified with the local teams. And now, back in Ohio, when the Phoenix teams are no longer local, I don’t move toward rooting for the Bengals or the Blue Jackets or the Reds or the Cavaliers (though Cleveland has for years been my favorite American League baseball team, but still behind both the Mets and Diamondbacks. I assume this has to do with how bad the Cleveland teams were when I was growing up. Reds fans were obnoxious and contending; Indians fans had little to celebrate and so I had little issue with them. I also worked for a radio station in high school that broadcast Cleveland Indians games). Instead, I move back to the New York loyalties. I suppose it should tell me something about how I feel about Ohio, though I have the feeling things might be different if I was in Columbus, Cleveland, or Cincinnati. Maybe it says something about how all of these sports work in my life, as well. Hockey seems to be the easiest for me to switch my loyalties. I’m probably most likely to become a Columbus Blue Jacket fan of all of the Ohio professional sports teams. Hockey is also the least of the four that I’ve followed throughout my life. Additionally, the Blue Jackets weren’t around when I was growing up, so there’s little basis for identifying against them there. Why football keeps my most loyal allegiance, though, while baseball is my favorite of the sports, is something that really makes me wonder …

On the collegiate level, there’s little doubt: I’m a BGSU Falcon above all else. I suppose that has something to do with feeling like I choose that identity. Maybe that plays into my Arizona loyalties as well …