acts.1.eight

i had been planning on writing some sort of retrospective.  a year-in-review.  2007 revisited.  but as i looked back at previous entries i came across one that i really believe sums up what this last year has been like for me.  so instead of some long look back, i will just repost this one for you all.

anyone who has been reading over the past few days knows that i have been trying to decide on a city whose sports teams i can begin cheering for.  i want to get past my nomadic fan-hood and settle into something more permanent.  you may recall that the previous post narrowed my choices down to a final five.  chicago.  pittsburgh. st. louis. cleveland. philadelphia.  let me know if you are interested in finding out more detail about the formula of arbitrary standards i used to come to this final five.

before i get into the final stage of my decision, i must say, i’ve gotten some good comments on this topic.  a couple that really stuck out to me both encouraged me to allow gunnar to make his own fan-hood decisions.  and i totally agree with this. also, my mom was quick to point out that even though i’m a nomadic fan, when i’ve chosen a team, i’ve stuck with them through bad seasons (see: notre dame football).  my loyalties have only changed when players i liked came and went.  so in that regard, i am no fair weather fan.    but i think there is something to be said for being loyal to a single city.  a hometown of sorts.  when the season rolls around, you know where  your loyalties are because they are with a franchise not with a player that can move more easily.  you can recycle your old fan gear because after a few years, they become throwbacks.  anyhow, i know full well that even if i chose to teach gunnar the virtues of one city, he may chose another one as he gets older.  he may grow to love players more than teams.  heck, he may never grow to be a big sports fan.  and that’s ok too.  more than anything, i want him to have know what teamwork, loyalty, and community are about.  i think you can learn those types of things just from being a fan of sports.  maybe i’m idealistic….

anyhow, enough of that.  let’s get on to the decision making.  right off the top, i’m going to eliminate three cities:  philadelphia, pittsburgh, and cleveland.  i decided to eliminate them for distance purposes.  chicago comes in at about 650 miles from fargo and st. louis is about 800.  that gives them a distinct advantage because i could attend games in those cities more easily than in the others which are significantly farther.  none of the three eliminated have a natural rivalry with minnesota or kansas city which are the closest nfl cities to fargo.

so i thought about it a lot today.  chicago or st. louis.  i think on paper the obvious choice would be chicago.  there are  5 professional teams (cubs, white sox, bears, bulls, and blackhawks) compared with only three in st. louis (cardinals, rams, and blues).  it’s closer (650 to 800).  more natural rivalries with minnesota (vikings/bears, twins/white sox).  greater history/tradition.  but there was one area that hit a snag… the hockey teams.

the st. louis blues have been my favorite hockey team since i was a little kid.  i  remember getting a sports illustrated for kids magazine that had something about brett hull and i was sold.  they were my team.  i made my own shirt with their logo and wrote them a letter asking for brett hull’s autograph (which i received back from them).  i have two blues jerseys and just bought gunnar his first hockey jersey for christmas, a st. louis blues jersey to match mine.  couple that with the fact that chicago’s team plays under the name “blackhawks” and has a giant indian head logo on their jerseys and i’ve got a dilema on my hands.  see i’ve decided that i don’t want to cheer for teams with native american nicknames.  and while “blackhawks” is pretty tame, i don’t want to compromise.  it just seems to me that if an group of people that have been as subjected to abuse, genocide, and broken promises ask you not to use their names or imagery as a sports nickname, you should respect that.   i don’t know what kind of relationship the blackhawks or organization has with the native people in illinois, so for that reason, i’d like to stay away from them.

so here’s what i’ve decided.  because most of the standards of this whole experience were entirely arbitrary and based on my own biases towards certain cities and teams, i’m going to apply some “artist’s license” to this little activity.  new rule: one substitution is allowed to push a city over the top.  based on this new rule, i have substituted the st. louis blues for the chicago blackhawks.  as a result of this substitution, chicago has become the overwhelming winner.  the only issue left to be decided is which baseball team to cheer for, the cubs or the white sox.  having been to wrigley field to see the cubs play once already, i don’t think i could justifiably make a case against being a fan.  simple enough.  decision made.   the other beautiful thing about being a chicago fan?  south bend, indiana, the home of the univeristy of notre dame is only 100 miles on the other side.  can you imagine the kind of sports weekend i could have some september? cubs baseball on friday, fighting irish football on saturday, bears football on sunday…. wow.

so there you have it.  chicago it is (with a little help from the blues).  here are my new favorite teams:
football – chicago bears
baseball – chicago cubs
hockey – st. louis blues
basketball – chicago bulls
college football – notre dame fighting irish

the only exception i will make to this is in college hockey.  i went to the university of minnesota my freshman year, attended a hockey game at mariucci areana, and decided to cheer for the gophers hockey team. it’s great also to go watch the gophers play the sioux in hockey around here and sing the minnesota rouser after the gophers score.  alright enough about sports for now.  remind me to write about jason stewart’s wedding, alright?

so i’ve received a few comments on here and on myspace regarding the city (or in the case of chris schwartz, the state) that i should teach gunnar to cheer for. but none have really stuck out to me yet.

tonight, i decided to be a little more mathematical about it and i devised a formula based mostly on arbitrary standards determined by me. I started with the 32 nfl teams (not cities, because you couldn’t just chose new york, you need to side with either the jets or giants). then applied my standards. these standards included OPT (Other Professional Teams), HIST (History and Tradition of their sports teams), UNI (Uniform and nickname quality), PROX (physical distance from me), BDWG (would chosing this city appear to be bandwagon jumping?), PLR (individual players or stars that i like who play for that city’s teams), NEG (docking them for something negative like, do the yankees play in that city? or did they steal the whalers from hartford?). Additionally, i gave certain cities extra credit for nearby franchises that don’t belong to an NFL city. for example, i allowed cincinnati and cleveland a bonus of .5 for the columbus blue jackets. i could cheer for them either way.

there were some professional franchises that i did not know what to do with, for example, the portland trailblazers. seattle already has a basketball team and i gave san francisco credit for sacremento and oakland credit for golden state. i decided that they could be used as a wild card to tip the scales for a city that doesn’t have have an nba team, like st. louis. i also was unsure of what to do with the toronto teams and the other canadian hockey franchises. they can also be used as wild cards, however, they should stay regional (i.e. vancouver, edmonton, or calgary could go to seattle but not to baltimore).

anyhow, here are the top five so far (no wild cards added):

chicago – 18.0
pittsburgh – 16.0
st. louis – 14.0
cleveland – 13.5
philadelphia – 13.0

and here are the bottom 5:

indianapolis – 7
tampa – 6.5
new york jets – 6.5
jacksonville – 6.0
carolina – 3.0

as for wild cards, pittsburgh or st. louis could use the portland wild card. just for the sake of chosing, i’ll give it to st. louis. buffalo will get two wild cards for the toronto blue jays and toronto raptors.  i also decided to give baltimore, seattle, and arizona credit for a canadian hockey team to be decided on later. these wild cards adjusted the top five like so:

chicago – 18.0
pittsburgh – 16.0
st. louis – 15.0
cleveland – 13.5
tie – baltimore, philadelphia, arizona – 13.0

so the wild cards did little to change the top five.  i’ve decided to give the edge in the three way tie to philadelphia because it did not require a wild card to move into the top 5.  so the top five are the same as they were originally.  chicago. pittsburgh. st. louis. cleveland. philadelphia.   keep the thoughts coming.

something has been on my mind for sometime.  i read a guy on espn.com fairly often called “the sports guy.”  he’s funny and entertaining, although i think i probably enjoyed him more pre-2004 when the red sox won the world series after an 86 year drought.  reading the musing of a tortured red sox fan were entertaining, if for no other reason than the fact that he showed true fan-hood…  he stuck with his teams.  now that boston’s sports teams are all doing really well, he has been rewarded with his commitment to his teams.

i have to admit, there are times when i am reading his postings that i get jealous of him.  he was born and raised to be a celtics/red sox/patriots/bruins fan.  and even though he has moved to a new city (los angeles)  and has bought season tickets to another team (the clippers), he is still a die-hard boston fan.  the times i am the most jealous are the time when he describes how his relationship with his dad and the relationships with his own kids are impacted by the teams.  he got his daughter out of bed so she could see the celebration after the red sox won the world series this year and his son’s birth came at a time when the red sox and patriots were exhibiting their current success and right near the beginning the basketball season when the “big three” debuted for the celtics.

it’s not that i don’t have these opportunities.  one of the first cool things that gunnar has learned is to raise both hands in the air when someone says “touchdown.”  we have watched plenty of football together in his young life and he got his first hockey jersey for christmas this year.  the problem comes with this… i don’t really have sports loyalties.  i grew up in an area where everyone loved minnesota teams.  somewhere along the line (probably the 1991 world series when i cheered for the braves),  i decided to hate minnesota teams.  since then, my loyalties have not been so much with anyone team.  i loved philadelphia and green bay when reggie white played.  i loved tampa bay when mike alstott played.  and now i am passively cheering for the browns because they drafted brady quinn.  the problem is, i have always loved players more than teams and my fan-hood has lived and died based on what teams the individuals i liked at that time played for.  the only constants i have had are notre dame in college football and st. louis in hockey.  and really, both hockey and baseball have damaged my fan-hood at times to the point of pushing me to casual observer status.  basketball is virtually irrelevant in my mind until march madness and the nba playoffs come around.  for the most part, football is the sport that drives me.

here’s the thing, i don’t really want gunnar to be a nomadic sports fan like i am.  granted, i want him to come to his fan-hood on his own and not be forced to like sports at all.  but still, an appreciation for sports is not a bad thing for a little boy to learn.  there is a part of me that wants to chose a sports city to identify with and start teaching gunnar to love teams from that town.  but what city would i chose?

so let’s open this up for discussion… nominate the city you think gunnar should cheer for.  all i ask is that they have a professional football team and at least one other major sports franchise in that city as well.  explain why you think i should choose that city and we’ll go from there.  i’ll critique the selections and then make a decision from there.  tell all your friends to come by and share their thoughts as well.