My Search For An NFL Team

Over the last few years, I have become increasingly apathetic about the NFL. As a LA-area product, I don’t have a natural geography-based team to root for, and I’m not tied enough to any of the places I’ve lived since then to adopt those teams. Yet somehow, I remained a big NFL fan, as well versed in the league as any rabid talk-show-calling colored-face-painting personally-customized-jersey-wearing fan around.

But I can feel the early symptoms of fan-decline in my bones. I cannot watch two games back to back anymore. I find fantasy football less and less fun each season, to the point where I am contemplating retiring from fantasy football at the end of this season. My head feels like it’s going to explode from the endless inane commentary from the league’s exalted talking heads. The signs are all around me – football is my new baseball. Dying. Gleefully rooting for anyone to beat the Patriots in 2007 masked some of thesymptoms, but this season’s storyline-less season has brought me to a crossroads: I need to start rooting for an NFL team to continue to care about all of this.

A few of you might be wondering, why do you need an NFL team? Can’t you just stop watching the NFL? The short answer is no. The long answer is yes, I could, except I would be completely marginalized as an American sports fan. It would be analogous to telling people I am a huge fan of classic movies, except I don’t like The Godfather, Citizen Kane, Raging Bull and Gone With the Wind. Or that I love competitive reality television but dislike Real World/Road Rules Challenge. So here I am, a willing, eager, knowledgeable NFL fan, in search of a team. But who should I choose? Normally this would call for a ranking or a reverse ranking, because this is what people do when they write about the NFL. But I will avoid that! Because I am different and interesting!

New England, Oakland, NY Giants, NY Jets, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minnesota, Green Bay

No to all of these teams because the fanbase has too clear an identity, and you can’t just hop on and pretend you’re one of them. New England – I passionately dislike Boston plus there’s the spector of the we-might-be-closet-racists thing. Never been to jail and would never wear a costume not on Halloween, so Oakland is out. Don’t like the culture of being a NY fan. Cowboys fans are either from Texas or complete posers. I’m not fat enough to root for the Bears. Actually used to like Philly when they had Randall Cunningham, but later I learned that Philly fans are just vile people. Vikings fans are all bonded from their ’98 NFC Championship Game loss – it so permeates their fanbase that How I Met Your Mother even made fun of it for like 4 minutes. Since I don’t share that despair, can’t be one of them. And I have never met a Packers fan who was not from Wisconsin.

Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit

These teams also have a specific culture, but I needed to separate them because their specific culture revolves around being horrendous at football. I’m not going to voluntarily waterboard myself.

Washington

Really, what’s to like here?

Jacksonville, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Indianapolis

I don’t think you can say you’re a real fan of a team if you don’t go to games, or at least want to go to games. I’m not even certain they’ve seen Asian people in Jacksonville, so things might go horribly. But on the flip side, everyone would be worried about my karate skills.

Houston, Arizona, Carolina, Tampa, Seattle, St. Louis

What’s attractive here is that these teams all have very little fan identity. I call these the “Blank Slate” teams. If you’re a fan of a Blank Slate team, my inclusion of your team may be offensive. You may feel a deep sense of team and fanbase identity. But this is factually incorrect. Nobody knows what you guys are like, and if I decided to tell everyone tomorrow that I was a lifelong fan of a Blank Slate team, nobody would have any way to determine if I was legitimate. “Yeah, you know what? Eric always sort of seemed like a Seahawks fan…it makes sense, he has that whole, uh, you know, um, Seahawky, uh, thing about him, you know?”

Miami, Baltimore, Denver, San Diego, San Francisco, New Orleans, Atlanta

The Top 7, in some order, unless I go the Blank Slate route. Good ownership groups, reasonably flexible fan identities (maybe not Baltimore – New Orleans had that culture of losing thing, but they’re in transition), acceptable-to-excellent cities to visit and acceptable-to-excellent uniforms (Ultimately, this matters more than fans care to admit. Another reason nobody roots for the Browns).

I’m going to do some more in-depth research on these 7 teams/fanbases and come to some kind of conclusion which I’ll post later. Insight and recommendations are encouraged and appreciated.