Fan Switch - When Is It OK to Switch Your Favorite Sports Team?

My friend Tim often shares with me his frustration with any and all things relating to the Dallas Cowboys. Whether it be something Jerry Jones said or did, there seems to be no shortage of things for him and any other Dallas Cowboys fan to legitimately complain about.

I don't want to turn this blog into a Quentin Tarantino flick with the colorful quotes that Tim shares with me about draft picks, dumb signings and baffling quotes - the most baffling of which has to be when he said he would fire himself as general manager if he weren't also the owner.

The more Tim complains, the more I tell him - bail on your team, like yesterday. I won't normally advocate being able to change your favorite teams mid-life, but I've come up with a few exceptions to the rule.

When is it OK to switch your sports fan interest?

Note - this applies to any sports-loving adult. Kids can go back and forth and often love a couple of teams throughout the course of their childhood for reasons as silly as them being an expansion team or having a left-handed quarterback (so I liked the Jaguars when they first joined the league because of Mark Brunell).

Here are my only acceptable reasons for being able to switch allegiances to teams. I used some ideas that I found from a Google search on the topic, but the words and thoughts (as always) are my own:

1. Relocation of a team into your city/out of your city/team folds: This is one of the most acceptable forms of changing your rooting interest in a sport. For example, no one should expect any Seattle Supersonics fan to continue their allegiance to the Oklahoma City franchise when the Sonics had their team stolen away from them. If someone decides to completely disown being a sports fan in that scenario, I wouldn't blame them.

By the same token, if your city finally gets that coveted franchise in your city, it's quite all right to start rooting for that team. Houston Texans fans may have once been Houston Oilers fans and may have converted to the Cowboys for a brief period of time when the Oilers moved to Nashville. But once they have a new team, all bets are off on what team you could/should root for.

2. You're lucky enough to know an athlete, and you root for his/her team in lieu of your original rooting interest: No one can blame you if you have a brother who was just drafted by the Washington Redskins and suddenly become a fan of the franchise when the previous part of your life, you were cursing Washington as a die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan. Bloodlines can acceptably change your fandom. And if this player switches teams, it's quite all right to move along with the team.

3. Your ownership/management group are a bunch of dipshits who you can tell have no competency in running a franchise and often make moves that are done against common sense and/or making your team competitive. See: Jones, Jerry and Wirtz, Bill, among many other owners who have seemed to lack a clue in running a franchise.

"I just wanted to announce that I will continue to sabotage a great franchise, so suck it Trebek!"

When I see Jerry Jones, I see a man who was lucky to win 3 titles in 4 years thanks to the team that was made mostly by Jimmy Johnson. The worst thing that could have happened to America's Team was to win a title without Johnson in 1995, making Jerry Jones think it was all about him. Now, his ego gets in the way of any chance that the Cowboys have in seriously competing for a Super Bowl anytime soon. Have you seen the quarterbacks that have been on his rosters? Outside of Tony Romo, who was brought in by Sean Payton & Bill Parcells when they were with the Cowboys, the Cowboys haven't had anyone lining up under center with an IQ higher than Forrest Gump's. Quincy Carter, Drew Henson, Chad Hutchinson - all bums drafted in the Jerry Jones era. No wonder why he would have fired himself as general manager, yet continues to hold onto this role due to his incompetency and Texas-sized ego.

The subject of Bill Wirtz is sure to warm the hearts of Chicago Blackhawks fans. Wirtz, who built his wealth thanks to liquor distribution and housing, was way behind the times, never embracing modern technology (he didn't allow Hawks home games on TV for fear that people wouldn't go to the games - never mind that just about every other successful team had no problem selling out their arenas when their games were on TV). For being known as a smart businessman, I am baffled at how he could not see the value of showing his team on TV. Also, his nickname "Dollar Bill" stems from his days as a very frugal owner. Most of the Hawks' best free agents signed elsewhere in the 90s, and so began the quick decline of a once proud Original Six franchise.

Bill Wirtz: Great Businessman, Shitty Hockey Owner

(And an aside: many hockey fans of teams outside of Chicago will often critique Blackhawks fans for jumping on the bandwagon in the past 3-4 years. While the Hawks have picked up their fair share of bandwagon fans - as any team does in any sport when they field a competitive team, the fans, even the most loyal of ones, were in no condition to support their hometown team when Dollar Bill was the owner. When the old man died and his sons took over, they immediately corrected the mistakes that their father did while owner of the team, including lifting the home-game TV blackout for all home games. It was moves like this, not as much the winning I'd argue, that brought back the fans who used to go to games back in the day but refused to support a franchise who refused to support the fan. I have no problem with the Blackhawks fans who have become fans in this time frame. And as is the case with any bandwagon, you may pick up some new life-long fans from it who end up sticking with the team during future down years.)

In both of these cases, I would not blame a Dallas Cowboys fan, nor would I have blamed a Blackhawks fan, for switching teams. If your management/ownership group show a lack of interest in remaining a competitive sports franchise by constantly spitting in the faces of its fan base with its baffling and incompetent moves, if they abandon you to the point where they don't even really care about you as fans anymore, then who's to say you HAVE to be loyal right back? Do you stay in relationships longer than you should because you don't want to be looked at as being unloyal? That's a dumb reason to stay in a relationship, just as it would be to stay a hardcore fan of a team when that team's owners/management eats a bunch of White Castles and shits all over your hopes on a yearly basis.

4. No more rules apply: I would say that moving to a new city would allow you to root for a new team, but I think this would only be acceptable if you moved from a city/town that had no franchise in a particular sport to one that did. Otherwise, you stick with whatever team you were rooting for before you moved (which is likely your hometown team as long as you're not a weirdo like me who roots for an out-of-market team in football - 49ers).

Here are some major no-no's for changing mid-stream:

• No bandwagon jumping. Even if the ownership clause applies here, you can't just ride the hot hand and root for what's in, at least not when you're an adult. Like I said before, kids are flaky sports fans. Let them weed out who they really want to root for. Once they make their decision (and none of the above exceptions of changing teams apply), they will be forced to pick a team and stick with them. This is only if you are currently rooting for a team. If you've never been interested in a sport before, I have no problem with you jumping on the wagon, especially of a local team, so as long as you don't jump onto another wagon soon after if your newfound team falls and fails.
  
  Temporary fandom, if only for one night, (when a friend of yours might be rooting for the Niners to win the Super Bowl for example) is acceptable. Once that game or run of games is over, it's back to rooting strictly for your team.
• No actively rooting for multiple teams and playing favorites with whatever one happens to be doing better at the time. I understand if there might be a franchise who you admire from afar and wish your team could model itself after, but you cannot do the multiple fandom thing and flip-flop between who you root for the most. Not allowed.

So to the Tims out there who are rooting for a team whose ownership has turned its back on loyal fans across the country, I say, "find a new team." Why should you continue to give your team love and support when the guys running the team don't return the favor? If I am going to remain emotionally invested in a team, it's going to be with a franchise whose owners and management will do whatever they can to make themselves a competitive franchise for years to come.

Long shots, Cutler, & Week 1 Gambling Leans

I can't not focus on football, so here's some more random football thoughts.

Long shots that I'd consider placing money on if I were in Vegas with these odds (Long shot defined as anything beyond 20/1) - odds provided by www.bookmaker.eu:
Houston Texans: 30/1 - If you read my last blog about football, you'd already know this would be a long-shot that I would like.
Chicago Bears: 38/1 - If they can protect their QB even slightly better than last year, they can be better than last year. Although I think teams around them in the upper echelon of the NFC got better and will be better. Still, at these odds, it'd be worth a small bet on these odds if their defense can play up to the same level as last year and offense improves slightly.
Tampa Bay: 45/1 - Big fan of these odds for a team with a soon-to-be Pro Bowl QB in Josh Freeman (25 TDs, only 6 ints), a tough-to-tackle RB in LeGarrette Blount, and a defense that was top 10 in points allowed and takeaway differential. These odds are inflated mainly due to their NFC South competition (New Orleans and Atlanta). But at 45/1, I'd be all over these odds.

Thoughts on how Jay Cutler will be received:
If Cutler is booed to start the year because of how last year ended, then I wish those fans a season full of Todd Collins and see how that goes. Everyone and their mother seemed to get caught up in the emotion of the injury last year that left Cutler sidelined for the 2nd half of the NFC Championship game in their eventual loss to the Packers. Fans and fellow NFL players (notably Maurice Jones-Drew) were basing their judgments of Cutler's "injury" on the shots that Fox showed of him on the sideline supposedly not caring about what was going on in the game or not helping Hanie out. I can't say this for certain because I wasn't there, but I'm fairly certain Fox was showing isolated shots of him by himself on purpose to paint this picture. It doesn't help that Cutler is cold to the media (and now seeing how misconstrued they painted him here, who can blame him?), so he gets no benefit of the doubt from the fans.

The dude got raped without protection all year (52 sacks in 15 games played) and should be soon delivering the bastard baby that the Giants impregnated him with last October. He started all but one game last year despite this beating behind one of the worst offensive lines that Chicago has ever seen. I'm not saying he shouldn't be taking the blame for some of these sacks and also just taking blame in general when the offense goes awry, but to question this guy's toughness (especially a guy who's playing with diabetes) is pure ignorance.

My favorite thing to come from the Cutler aftermath was when people said they saw him walking around just fine when they saw him going to a restaurant in the city or the like. Yeah - because walking into a restaurant is the same thing as running away from 250 pound linebackers on a football field with an MCL tear. If he's dodging angry waiters who lost money on the Bears after the game with amazing grace, then get back to me. Please don't boo him to start the year for last year because you think he pussied out of the biggest game of his life. Instead, save those boos for legitimate mistakes that he will eventually make in 2011.

22 days until college football starts, 29 till NFL kicks off...
which means I can't stop thinking about who I am going to bet on in week 1. The preseason in NFL will affect some of these odds, but I have some idea of a few potential week 1 NFL bets:

Kickoff game: New Orleans at Green Bay (-4.5/total of 46). I like the under here. Seems like week 1, especially opening game, defenses are ahead of offenses, which leads to lower scores. I'd love to see the total go up to about 48 or so if possible (the betting public almost always bets Overs on prime-time games), but will likely be happy with betting this at 46. I see about a 20/24-17 score in the opener.

Sunday games: Indianapolis at Houston (-3/total of 46). I like the over here. While I think the Houston defense will be better with Philips as their D-coordinator, I wouldn't be surprised if there's an adjustment for some of these guys to get acclimated to a 3-4 defense. If Manning plays, I'd expect a total score in the low 50s at least. If the line falls to 2.5, I may consider Houston as a pick.

Carolina at Arizona (-5.5, 36.5). Seems like most people are on the Kolb train, but I can't lay 5.5 on a team that didn't really do much else to improve their team through the free agent wire. Their offensive line allowed almost as many sacks as the Bears did, and it doesn't appear they addressed their O-line woes. Meanwhile, the Panthers were devastated with injuries last year and can't get worse than they were last year. I think Ron Rivera will get about 6 wins out of these guys this year. I'll gladly take the +5.5 and may consider a money line bet on them if I use a book this year that has money lines.

I know more lines will stick out soon, but those are the initial ones that I see. I'm going to try avoiding NCAA betting in week 1, but may find an angle to bet on in the high-profile game (LSU/Oregon).


Not much time left till the season starts in both, so let the countdown continue and let's watch baseball go swiftly into the sunset. This up/down/up/down from the Sox has me convinced they will end 81-81, so no use sweating that.

9 more days till fantasy football draft - which officially kicks off the football mania. Happy football!