I get a significant amount of crap for my choice in
professional sports teams. Constantly
defending my decisions to like one team over the other as well my decision to
cheer for the home team when I go to a game that I have no personal stake in. My
Big 4, football, baseball, basketball, hockey, are all in different cities. To break it down:
Football: I’m an
Eagles fan but cheer for the Panthers 364 days a year. This year being the only
time I’ve had to pick between the two since I moved here.
Baseball: I cheer
for the O’s but appreciate the fact that the Nats weren’t around during my
childhood and now they are at the same time supporting the Charlotte Knights
that feed into the White Sox network.
Basketball:
Though I’ve never been deeply invested in the sport I found myself watching and
cheering for the Bobcats (Hornets) when I moved here but follow the Warriors
more on social media and can probably name more of their players do to a random
six-degrees connection to one of their players.
Hockey: Washington
is technically my home team and I’m happy to say out of the four, that’s the
only one that’s really uncontested.
I would like to pretend it’s strictly a professional sports,
but I’ve been exposed to quite a few different college sporting events since moving
here, too. On the shelf next to my 6 years worth of free I Bleed Purple
t-shirts are shirts from Davidson College, NC State, Carolina, Virginia and I’m
almost sad to admit it, but in about two weeks I’ll own a yellow Appalachian
State shirt for a game I begrudgingly agreed to go in a month.
Mixed up? Maybe. And it should also come as no shock that I
regularly have to defend my choices as well explain the collection of sports
apparel that covers professional and college teams all up and down the East Coast
and one basketball team in San Francisco. My favorite is trying to convince
someone that I have a valid reason to be passionate about a team from a city I’ve
never lived in and have no logical connection to. A close second favorite is
explaining why I live in Charlotte, own 6 Panther’s t-shirts and hats and will
still cheer for the Eagles on November 10th this year.
At the end of the day and to explain it in its most
simplified form, I just love sports. I love having something to cheer for, to
be passionate about, and to be a part of a community that comes together for a
common reason. It’s refreshing to see 60,000 people all wearing the same color,
cheering for the same thing amongst the conflict that plagues everyday life. And if that means that every Sunday I put on
black and blue to tailgate in uptown Charlotte while checking the Eagles score
on my phone to be a part of that particular community, then so be it. (I also
refuse to be one of those people who shows up to a game wearing a jersey from a
team that isn’t even playing on the same coast.)
