Despite my hatred of having my order memorized by the most convenient Subway restaurant to my workplace, I always find it to be very pleasant that workers at my regular barber shop all recognize me, ask me about stuff specific to me when making conversation with me, etc.

The Subway thing all comes back to a complex where I feel weird about ordering the same sandwich every time.

If the volume of your voice changes even slightly with your blood alcohol content, you are a horrible person and shouldn't drink.

Bennie and the Jets is a black mark on the otherwise solid catalog of Elton John music.

gtfo. That song is awesome.

That reminds me of when people thought they were oh-so-clever saying "Vinny and the Jets" when Testaverde played there.

Also Halpert, I've been resisting staging an intervention where we all sit you down and bully you to death about this thing where you apparently support two NFL teams. What is this about you rooting for the Cowboys too?

Grew up in South Florida. Parents were from Dallas and had been Cowboy fans forever. Entire (large, Thanksgiving is like 60 people every year) family was as well so I grew up surrounded by Dallas fans. My teams are the Florida ones (Dolphins, Magic, Marlins, UCF Knights), but between having that environment growing up, my entire family wanting them to win, spending lots of time in Dallas growing up, and then moving there when I finished school (and therefore getting all the news/talk/headlines/whathaveyou) Dallas is a team I like to see do well (the same for the Mavericks and Rangers).

The gap between Miami and Dallas is incredibly large, but I tend to have the opportunity to talk about Dallas stuff more often because that's what's on my TV constantly so it sometimes doesn't come off that way. For instance, I don't feel like my team has won an NBA title despite the fact I was in Dallas for their run and got to enjoy watching it/talking about it/all that stuff.

This part salvaged the whole thing I suppose:

I always just hold deep resentment against fans who seem to be doubling/tripling their chances of shipping a title when I'm stuck with my crap teams (though thankfully my NFL team has ceased to be crap for the time being). But you seem to be clear on that front.

Oh yeah, I know people that are like Mavs/Spurs/Rockets fans and it makes me sick. It's not just the "you triple your chances" thing, but it's so much more the fact that you never get the true high. The true "holy **** 'we' did it" high.

I went to a large number of Marlins games growing up. I'm talking about 1999 when they almost lost 100 games and the OF was like Todd Dunwoody and Mark Kotsay. The team was absolutely atrocious. The stadium was empty. But it was baseball and baseball is my #1, plus seats were dirt cheap since nobody came. 2003 is the highest sports could possibly be for me. It was a team that was varying degrees of mediocre to terrible for 5 years and came out of nowhere to win it all. I remember that year going on summer vacation to a Marlins game in Chicago (which was pretty cool, Sosa put the game winner out of the stadium off of Pavano) and being ridiculed by Cubs fans about how they finally found the 4 Marlins fans in the world (super nice time/people though, def recommend going to a game at Wrigley if you haven't). I remember sitting in restaurants with my dad in the middle of July going "you know, this team is pretty good. Pavano is pitching great and Beckett is awesome". I remember being in the upper deck when Pudge held on to the ball when Snow collided with him in g4 of the NLDS and going nuts. I remember watching ESPN after Beckett won g5 of the NLCS and rolling my eyes at all of their segments about how "sure teams have come back from down 3-2 BUT THAT WASN'T AGAINST PRIOR AND WOOD". I remember thinking that while Steve Bartman was awesome, the true heroes were Moises Alou for losing his **** over it and the bad Alex Gonzalez for booting a routine double play ball. And I remember Beckett tagging out Posada and a full blown party breaking out on our street.

That's it. That's why you watch sports - for that kind of run. You know how we watch all that bull**** in WWE for those few moments of something elite? That's what sports fandom is too I think. And you lose that incredible high when you remove yourself from all the lows by switching to the good teams while yours is bad. I'll never understand it. They rob themselves of the best part of sports.

Can only shake my head.



edit: NEVER FORGET http://m.mlb.com/video/v16860113/03-...marlins-win-it

I know a girl who is a very avid football fan, knows more than most guys, and insists that she's both a Bears and Colts fan. Obviously I've harassed her about this for years on the basis that she's wrong.

Me: "They went against each other in the Super Bowl. Who did you root for?"
Her: "The Colts."
Me: "THEN THAT'S YOUR TEAM. You're attempting to say that the Bears are your team, AND that you rooted against your team in the Super Bowl?"
Her: "Yes."

****.

Her husband decided to dutifully follow along and adopt both the Bears and Colts as his teams, along with his other team, the Patriots. I'm not even kidding. He's a nice guy and a good friend, but I would curbstomp him if all I had to go on was his sports fandom.

Hey, at least he's always got a team in the hunt!!!111!!!11!1!

I've enjoyed the last few posts very much. Having two teams in the same league is the worst. Back in 2002, my dad was a Pats and Bucs fan. Like wtf? Now, he doesn't even mention the Bucs.

My brother is pretty bad, too. He's a Colts fan, but that year they went 3-13, he watched none of the games because "He knew they were going to lose." What kind of fan are you? I watched every game of the Eagles "Dream Team" era, and did I think they were going to win? Hell no.

There's usually some sort of enjoyment to be found in hopeless seasons. I really liked the 2011 Seahawks season where we ended up 7-9, largely because it looked like the team had really hit on some young talent and I was confident that if we found a QB we were going to put together a legit playoff run soon. Hell, I almost certainly enjoyed the 2011 team that went 7-9 over the 2004 team that went 9-7 and won the division. **** the 2004 Seahawks, I hate them more than anything outside of maybe that one year that Jim Mora Jr. was in charge.

I can't get too high and mighty about the fairweather stuff though, because that generally describes how I am with the Mariners to some extent. I subscribe to the $25/month MLB.tv package on a month-to-month basis and then usually unsubscribe after they've fallen out of the race (which usually is pretty early; obviously this year I watched up until the very end). I do draw a point of difference, not just in football's general superiority but also in the fact that there are only 16 football games and it's crazy to me to not watch your team play as many times as possible. The time investment in baseball just feels very excessive when the team is so bad that it's truly spending ~18 hours a week watching them play like crap rather than three hours a week.

Yeah, it's tough to watch every baseball game. I try to watch as many Phillies games as possible, but they're so terrible now, that it's hard to watch them all. I just end up following the box score on MLB.com

Baseball is so much fun when your team is competitive. In 2012 I watched almost every inning of the Sox, then the next 2 years I was lucky to see half the games. I think the 16 game season is why football is my favorite to watch. You can catch every minute of your team easily, and keep up with most of the league as well just due to TNF, SNF and MNF.

Hockey is approaching my favorite atm, and that probably has a lot to do with the Hawks being competitive as well.

In football teams seem to frequently be making progress even when they are down. More first downs happen than base runners. Way more eight yard gains happen than doubles in the gap. The 'defense' wins almost 70% of the time in baseball, and getting outs is more fun with the lead.

Bad baseball teams really need good announcers to keep things interesting, and announcing in general seems to have gone downhill.

I was on the other side of this. I listened to the radio broadcast with the TV on mute. I will never forget Steve Stone (who was announcing Cubs radio at the time) saying after game 5 "The Marlins have never lost a playoff series, but they are going to lose this one". They still have not lost one.

The announcing thing is a good point as well. I grew up on Dave Neihaus, now in the Hall of Fame but unfortunately now deceased as well, and now am stuck on TV broadcasts with Dave Sims, who is hilarious awful. He did accidentally deliver this gem of a home run call after his brain seemingly broke while the ball was in mid-air or something though:



Big issue for me as well is that it sucks badly to follow a west coast baseball team from Eastern Time. More than half our weeknight starts are at 10 p.m., so watching a game live is a great way to screw up my sleep for the whole rest of the work week.

Speaking of hockey, I'm a Leafs fan. And on the day when they finally do win the Stanley Cup, I'm convinced I will die of a heart attack and that will be the last thing I see. I'm okay with going out that way.

Hearing that call makes me feel very spoiled for all the years with Sean McDonough, Jerry Remy, Don Orsillo and Dennis Eckersley on NESN for the Red Sox

By the time the Leafs win the cup, you'll probably be in the expected age range for a heart attack.

Which option happens first.

1. Leafs win cup
2. Montreal wins cup.
3. Hell freezes over.

I really do think that the sweatervest is an article of clothing that conveys trustworthiness.

Wearing an undershirt, dress shirt, and tie all under a sweater seems like way too much effort when it barely shows anyway, along with far too many layers. Sweatervest seems like an ideal alternative, but all the men in my office just wear sweaters in the winter, so I'll probably stick with dress shirts and ties (no Xmas ties though, they just seem lame to me at this point in life)

Certainly for work they're lame. I don't own any but I'm guessing there are some that would work well for social ****.

I keep telling myself that the Leafs can't be that for away, can they? I mean it's been what? 48 years? Come on now. Just one Cup is all I ask. Same with the Eagles and the Super Bowl. God, I pick the worst teams.

I remember back when I was picking a hockey team I got it down to the Red Wings and the Leafs. The only reason the Leafs won was because they were on TV all the time (Hockey Night in Canada). Bad choice. I was also strongly considering New Jersey.