Question - fans of non-local teams?
Bit of a leap from another topic entirely got me interested in a sports question and this place seemed apt to ask it.
How many out there are fans of teams from places where they have never lived (and which are not the closest major league team as in South Dakota fans of MN teams etc), and why? Probable reasons I can think of:
1) Super-successful teams get non-local fans by long dominance. Yankees/Man Utd etc
2) Teams which have a star player, especially of an unusual demographic, absorb non-local fans of that player. The boost in Rockets support from Yao Ming springs to mind, but the Bulls drew in many from Jordan too obviously.
3) Usually a corollary of 1) but media availability creates non-local fans too. Before I even thought of emigrating, in the mid 80s, I became a fan of football in a country that showed one game a week and usually the same few teams. Any UK-born football fan of my generation more than likely was or is a follower of the Bengals, Bears or 49ers. I lived in the US before I even knew Houston or Buffalo had an NFL team - no joke.
So what other reasons are there? Who here is a fan of a non-dominant team not local to them, and how did you become so?
= new reply since forum marked as read
not suck up to them. 
Then again, I remember some poor sap who flew from Atlanta to Calgary to watch the first hockey team that ditched the ATL. 
Kind of odd how my favourites were formed. I was a Pirates fan early on, because my Dad was. I hated the Reds (and Pete Rose) and from the part of Ohio I was from, meant that I hated anything from Cleveland.
Think about what was offered in the NBA in the late 60's. The Cincinnati Royals were bailing on that city, and the Cleveland Cadavers (they were an expansion team, and see my comment above about Cleveland!!). Since I was from Ohio, I hated the Michigan teams. That left of course, the Boston Celtics, who had an Ohio State alumni, John Havilcek, playing for them.
BTW, I am a fan of The Ohio State University Buckeyes.
God, it's been too long since we had a "real fan" thread!!!
and then moved as adult to the same general area, but basically have no sports teams in common. 
Last edited Wed Jun 27, 2012, 01:34 PM - Edit history (3)
My main teams I places I lived. Arizona Cardinals & Arizona State Sun Devils - Tempe. Other teams. Suns - Phoenix (I never lived there but I lived next door and currently 2 cities away from Glendale, AZ in Mesa, AZ). So I'll count those teams as lived. Coyotes are another.
I root for the Colorado Rockies as my baseball team which is in Denver, the closest I've lived there was 50-75 miles north on I-25.
My #2 teams.
Denver Broncos (I count them as my "AFC team"
& Colorado State Rams which play in the city I was born in.
Throughout the years there are teams that are excellent and who games I want to see and I'm neutral to them so I tend to kinda want to win in playoffs where my team IS eliminated. The teams I generally dislike I never root for but that varies, I used to hate the Chiefs a long with the Cowboys with a burning passion but I actually find myself rooting for KC more often than past years. I enjoyed hating them because they were very good and great at home, a lot of games where the road team(especially Denver) think they have the game in hand then freaky things occur and the KC kicker is making a very long field goal w/ wind swirling, barely making it over the cross bar. Some of the greatest games I ever saw was Denver @ KC but it is not nearly as like that anymore so I tend to root for Chiefs. Cowboys I'm mostly neutral, still some hate carried from the Cardinals time in the NFC East.
It is an inside joke from the cboy4 days (which are somewhat common). Usually stuff like "nice post cboy".
Here is an example --- http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=215x85438
I honestly feel that no one here has suspicions about you, it was a joking reference to one of many threads by a very provocative poster as this thread is somewhat of a reminder. 
I came of age in a place with no teams of its own, but I was a fan of the Broncos because they were the closest team and because my parents (who both lived in Colorado in high school and/or before) were fans. If they had stayed in the Upper Midwest (where I was born), perhaps I'd be more of a Packers fan, but I think their Broncos fandom might have influenced me as well. Growing up--especially in a place where the nearest major sports team was about seven hours away, I knew other people who were fans of a given team because of their parents.
Maybe that's even more true with college teams, I don't know. I have cousins who never lived in Michigan but are hard-core Michigan fans because (a) they probably enjoyed watching games with their dad, who grew up in Ann Arbor and went to school at UM and (b) he might have disowned them if they hadn't (j/k ... I think 
. Even some of his grandkids are Michigan fans, though none have gone to school there.
I've also known people who became fans of a given team because of players from other teams--particularly their college team. I know a lady who is now a devout Broncos fan, but when she first moved to the region she was pretty lukewarm on them. She was originally from Nebraska and a huge Cornhuskers fan--the NFL was of (distant) secondary importance, but she was sort of a Chiefs fan. But she started coming around on the Broncos once they drafted Mike Croel (and Kenny Walker) from the University of Nebraska. I know another guy who was a 49ers fan from the moment they picked up Steve Young until he moved to a city that had a team of its own (by which time Young had long since retired anyway). (Meanwhile, the same guy hasn't liked the Broncos since they drafted Elway, who spurned BYU in the recruiting process.)
Most of the teams I'm a fan of are a function of geography, with the exception of the Braves--I've never lived anywhere near Atlanta, but as a kid there was no team in my time zone and they showed every game on TBS, so it was a media availability thing. (Certainly not a success thing--they were thoroughly inept at the time.)
in the reasoning of liking a non-local team, when a local team is present, is the fact that people in the local area are sick and tired of belligerent fans who irk them beyond reason, and they find themselves in positions of cheering/rooting/liking teams that conflict with the local team.
For example, I have a friend in Texas(born/fed) who hates the Longhorns because of all the press, media pundits, and fans that irk him beyond belief, and to boot they cheer/like the OU Sooners. And coincidentally a departed friend of mine who is Oklahoma born/fed, hates the Sooners, and roots for the Longhorns for much the same reasons...local fans/media pissing him off, and they find themselves rooting for the main rival of that local team.
As for myself, I fall into the category of being from a state that has zero pro teams, so I root for the closest team geographically, which is the Seattle Mariners, Seahawks, Vancouver Canucks(and the ill fated Sonics). I'm currently in MO though, so I guess I do cheer for non local teams.....
