It's amazing how he put up 31 points or whatever just constantly missing his target.

nice bump!

As long as he gets a 15 yard penalty every third pass, Flacco is unstoppable in the 4th quarter!

2011 AFC Title Game
Brady: 22/36 for 239 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT
Flacco: 22/36 for 306 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT

Penalties against Baltimore: 6 for 33 yards
Penalties against New England: 1 for 5 yards


2012 Week 3
Brady: 28/41 for 335 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT
Flacco: 28/39 for 382 yards, 3 TDs, 1 INT

Penalties against Baltimore: 14 for 135 yards
Penalties against New England: 10 for 83 yards

god assani is so insufferable when talking about his 'favorite teams'

preach on, brother assani

I think that if you look objectively at things you'll see that I'm no different than others. I mean, my team just won a huge game....I'm not allowed to make 2 posts, one saying "nice bump" and the other posting some stats where my team's much maligned QB outplays one of the GOATs in 2 straight games? Those TWO POSTS are really that insufferable? Compare that to Giants fans posting about Elite, LOL Steelers fans, Lions fans coming into our draft thread and voting for Stafford blindly, caseclosed/five4suited swearing that the Bears are better than the Packers, rmthawk posting about the Ravens,etc. etc. etc. How am I any worse than others? The game just ended 20 minutes ago....of course my posting is gonna be a little over the top after a huge win.

Thought your team was the Skins

Skins lost he's got to overcompensate somewhere. 1 point win over a 1-2 team, assisted heavily by refs? TIME TO TROLL.

if assisted heavily means having 40% more penalties for 52 more yards than your opponent, than ya, they were assisted heavily.

My team "power rankings":

Sad for days after big losses/happy for days after big wins, will never miss a game if I can help it
1. Redskins
2. Ravens

Big fan, but only their playoff/tournament games will really get me super pumped
3. Maryland Terps basketball
4. Wizards

Basketball Teams I also root for currently but will change based upon the players they have
5. Timberwolves
6. Team Spain

Total Casual Fan
7. Maryland Terps Football
8. Capitals
9. Orioles
10. Nationals

Lol two teams in the same league in tier 1

Sports fandom isn't really rational. I mean, think about what we are really doing here....first we arbitrarily draw lines to divide different countries/cities/states around the world, then we assign sports teams to certain places, and then because of where we happened to be born we passionately root for those teams to win despite the fact that we don't personally know any of the players at all.

Its just an absurd exercise that highlights how irrational humans can be. As such, I think its silly to claim that I'm breaking some unwritten rule by doing this. Its all goofy nonsense anyway, but god damn is it fun to participate in that goofy nonsense!

If you are worried about the rationality of your fandom, you are doing it wrong.

As a Steeler's fan I hate all things Balitmore, for no reason other than the football rivalry. Some of my best memories are when I lived in Westminster, attending college where the Ravens used to hold their training camp, and all the taunting/**** talking during football season with Ravens fans.

I know a lot of Nationals fans who maintain loyalty to the O's, but I can't really understand anyone claiming loyalty to both the Skins and Ravens unless you had a unique experience growing up in that WAS-BAL corridor. Skins have been around for so much longer it raises questions. There's no real cross-over, at all.

If you've got a mom Ravens fan and a Dad Skins fans, we'd all approve.

I'm not sure I get what you're saying....you can understand being a fan of Os/Nats but not Ravens/Skins because "skins have been around for so much longer"? Haven't the Orioles been around for so much longer too?

My point was that you "shouldn't be able to understand" any sports fandom. Its all silliness. People came to America, they called one patch of land "Baltimore", they called another patch of land "Pittsburgh"....it should make absolutely no sense that I would love a football team because its from Baltimore and hate a football team because its from Pittsburgh(or vise versa). Yet for some reason a great majority of humans seem to do this(not specifically with Pitt/Balt).

I picked a second NFC team to root for when I was 12 too. Like most adults I grew out of it though and picked a team.

The hate (at least w/ Pitt vs Balt) is what makes it fun. God help us when Pitt and Balt go at it with these replacement refs. Someone's gonna get killed.

to actually answer your question though about how I became a big fan of both teams....

I grew up a huge Skins fan. Always loved them. First memories were of them getting crushed by Giants in 1990 season I think. And I remember the whole area going nuts when we were so good in 1991.

When the Ravens moved to Baltimore, I wasn't a fan at first. Then the Skins became horribly mismanaged....just years and years of bad decisions. Meanwhile the Ravens had a great front office, a superstar in Ray Lewis who I really liked(murder charges aside ldo), and they basically did all the right things running their franchise that the Skins never did. This contrast really started drawing me to the Ravens. And since I live just about 20-30 minutes from both DC and Baltimore, I had a ton of friends who supported one or the other(and you're naturally more likely to root for teams everyone else you know is rooting for). Then the 2000 Ravens GOATed it up and they played the Giants in the Super Bowl. As a Maryland/DC/Baltimore guy I had always hated New York teams and I was going to college right outside NY City at the time. So it became easy to be a fan of them through that.

Eh, I think theres a difference between "picking a team" and living ~20 minutes away from the city that a team plays in. Being able to go to games, go to local bars showing the games, and interact with all the other local fans helps keep you a fan.

No, not really.

Not in the "get sick when they lose sense". Can't be a diehard fan of two teams in the same sport, it's pretty weak. Casual fan, sure

I mean can't isnt the right word. You obviously can. I just don't respect people like that as fans, not that you care.

Should have stopped there.

I'm not sure that word means what you think it means. Perhaps you, with your mental makeup that your genetics provided you, could never cheer super hard for 2 teams in the same league. But I was born with a different set of genetic code, and my brain is perfectly content doing just that. This doesn't really seem like something one person can tell another person they "can't" do imo.

If its "pretty weak" in your opinion, thats fine. It is my opinion that it'd be pretty weak for someone to lessen their personal enjoyment of a sport because they feel they have to conform to some unwritten rule and/or care what others think about their sports fandom.


edit: I see your 2nd post now-


Would you respect someone more or less if they found themselves passionately caring about two teams and then stopped doing so because they cared what others thought about them?

I mean, I really just don't see what you want me to say here. I didn't really 'choose' to like two teams...its just how my brain naturally worked and how my rooting interests developed. What else can I say?

I agree, I immediately rescinded the word cant in case you missed the back to back posts