Who's your favorite football team, and why?
I'm not a follower of the NFL, but I do love NCAA football. When I was a freshman in high school, two of the seniors on the team would come around and pep talk us before games and practice with us and such. As an underclassman, this grew into some degree of "idolizing" those guys. The following year, they both were accepted to Clemson, one of them with a football scholarship, the other playing as a walk on. For me, it was super cool to see those guys who were cool with me now on TV, playing for Dabo Swinney, and my fandom for the Clemson Tigers was born. Both graduated and moved on to real life, neither went on the play for the NFL or anything, but I never had a stronger reason to shift my loyalty to any other team afterwards, so they've remained my favorite NCAA football team ever since.
Who's your team, and what's your story?
I'm a Carolina Panthers fan. I was young and lived in the Carolinas when the team was founded. We were original PSL owners, but actually moved before the inaugural season. I have many fond memories of long road trips once per season to see a game.
Alas, as time passes, life changes. We don't have the PSLs (not my decision). It's been years since I made a game in person, but still follow closely. I am a huge fan who has really never lived locally relative to the team. It's an interesting dichotomy, but I'm used to it.
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I’m a guy from the UK, I found a Panthers jersey in a thrift shop in Boston, MA of all places. I thought the team was really cool and talented that year they had Cam Newton, Kevin Benjamin, Luke Kuechly and a few others who I thought would be great.
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Panthers fan here as well. Grew up in the Carolinas and went to Uni at Charlotte. I remember watching the first SB we went to. The game was close and tons of fun (also, saw a a boob on live TV, which was great for teenage me)
I have yet to go to a game, but I support the team greatly. This upcoming season is poised to be super fun and a welcome change of pace compared the last 5 years.
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The 49ers. I picked them while playing NFL 2004 and stuck with em ever since. My brother's a huge fan too :)
The 49ers aren’t my team, but they’ll always be special to me. I lived in the Bay Area when I was young. Always on TV there were documentaries about Montana and Young. I played as them in Quarterback Club 97. Whenever I see the gold on their jerseys my heart flutters.
NFL - da Bears, cuz they're the MONSTERS of the midway
College - Iowa Hawkeyes, born and raised in Iowa
I don't think you're me, but I suppose it's possible... Well, I wasn't actually born in Iowa, but i grew up there, in a Hawkeyes town. People in my hometown are generally Vikings (bleah) or Packers (bleah) fans. Now I live in Chicago, where it's much easier to be a Bears fan but also somehow awful-er.
Since you're from Dubuque, you may actually have heard of my hometown: Waukon. Now I definitely see you're not me because we apparently have opposite preferences in climate.
I find it a bit upsetting how many Packers fans there are around here. Like, I understand that the Bears aren't the easiest thing to like sometimes, but come on.
(Edit: forgot a word.)
Despite my status as a born and raised New Englander, my NFL football fandom has always gone with the Kansas City Chiefs. The basic reason is that my father hails from Kansas City, and being a dutiful son, I adopted his allegiance. The slightly more complex truth is that I wasn't raised a football fan in my younger years; the Chiefs' persistent losing had pushed my father away. For reasons mostly unrelated to him, I decided to become a football fan early in the 2013 season. I grew up as a strange kid, and somewhere along the way, I realized that I wanted more normal, relatable interests. And what's more normal than football? So, I knew that I wanted to follow an NFL team, but I didn't care which one. I had a sense that my father had been a Chiefs fan at some point in the distant past, but that was it. Fortunately, the Chiefs made my decision easy that season, going on a nine game winning streak to start the year and decisively ending a period as the worst team in football. I was hooked by week five.
Although it was cynical, my plan totally worked. I used my new football knowledge to make a whole bunch of well-adjusted friends throughout high school and college. One unexpected side-effect is that I discovered a genuine love for the game. I would call it one of my chief (haha) interests to this day. Another unexpected side-effect was that my Chiefs fandom reignited my father's. These days, discussing Chiefs news and watching games together is one of our primary father-son bonding activities. Through a very lucky (and extremely generous) connection, we even attended the Super Bowl this year, where we witnessed the Chiefs hoist the Lombardi live. I think my fandom will never reach such heights again.
As for NCAA football, my New England origins really doom me here. Being from the part of New England that isn't the Boston metro, college football wasn't (and isn't) a major cultural institution, and I'm dubious that it's a big deal even in Boston. The only watchable team within a hundred miles of my house was BC.
NFL - Broncos ⬅ kid
CFB - Florida Gators ⬅ move to florida as kid
CFL - ??
AFL - ??
FIFA - Seattle Sounders ⬅ move to seattle as adult
Fly Eagles Fly! On the road to victory! Fight Eagles Fight! Score a touchdown 1 2 3! Hit em low hit em high, and watch our Eagles Fly! E A G L E S EAGLES!
I grew up in upstate New York but with my father who is a native from Philly and a graduate of PSU. He was and still is a rabid Philly sports fan, so naturally I adopted all Philly sports teams as my own. I have an a original Nick Foles jersey that I acquired when he first joined the team, I knew then that big dick Nick was to be the one, and sure enough he came back and stepped up to help get the team that first SB ring!
College: Michigan Wolverines. GO BLUE!
NFL: Detroit Lions.I can endure the pain. This is our year.
The Denver Broncos. Like many others in this thread, it was how I was raised. Last Christmas I watched a bunch of old home videos with my family and about half of my dad's appearances are him watching the Broncos.
The first time I actually sat through a whole game was Super Bowl 32. I couldn't fully comprehend what it meant to my dad at the time, but I remember being glad I could share that with him. From that point on, I was hooked. For better or worse, I watched almost every Broncos game from 1998 till about 2018, some of them with my dad, most of them by myself. Nowadays it's kinda hard to get into it. It's hard to root for a team whose ownership group includes the Waltons, Condoleeza Rice, and of course, Pat Mahomes.
The New York Football Giants. It’s hereditary. My dad hasn’t missed a game since the sixties, including while my mom was in labor with me (my dad is more an anxious person than my mom and didn’t want him in the room stressing her out). My mom also knew a few 80s/90s players (most notably LT) because she headed the service department at a Jaguar dealership during that period, so they’d bring their cars in to have them fixed. As a family, we had seasons tickets until ‘09 when they built the new stadium, raised prices, and the markets crashed making them prohibitively expensive.
It’s a confusing existence because my baseball team is the Dodgers so I hate the other Giants team.
Never really cared about football, but I lived in Philly in 2018 and the general excitement of how well they were doing that year got me to watch a few games, and they ended up winning the superbowl that year. I still don't really care about football that much but if the eagles start doing well I'll get invested in them, very fair weather fan though. Watched a lot of their games last year and they made it to the superbowl again.
Steelers. Canadian that at some point in the mid 90s decided I should get into football. Steelers had the Bus at that point and I thought he had a cool nickname and I liked watching him run. Then we got Ben and won a Superbowl and I was hooked.
The Green Bay Packers. I spent my childhood in the state during the Super Bowl years in the nineties and definitely got caught up in the excitement.
Since then, as an adult, I’ve continued to follow them mostly out of nostalgia, but I also appreciate their place as a small market team in the league.
It is refreshingly unique for an American professional sports team to be owned not by a billionaire, but a non-profit owned by the community.
The first game I ever saw live was Rams versus Raiders. My dad was a Rams fan. I started out as a Raiders fan until I was older and realized that i could switch allegiance. I went to college in San Diego and therefore became a Chargers fan. Still root for them in LA since I was able to see games easier in LA than at Qualcomm in San Diego.
My grandfather grew up in Wisconsin and Illinois and so most of the rest of my family are Packers fans. My brother is one of the many co-owners of the Packers.
I may not follow the NFL really, but one of my favorite former Clemson Tigers now plays for the Raiders, so I'll pull for them every now and again.
When I was a kid, I was into The New York Jets. And then I got into girls as I got older, and then I got back into the Jets because I'd realized there's times when the girl won't fuck you, but the Jets will always fuck you.
New England Patriots.
I started watching in 1996-1997 when the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl. I didn't like football at all until I knew the Patriots were in. We lost that one, but it was still a fun experience and then I became I big fan of Drew Bledsoe and how he handled the QB position. Then, of course, as the years went by and we got Belichick and Brady....well, it just took off running. Been a fan ever since our glory days and won't stop. But, I'm also NOT a blind fan, our glory days are very much behind us and it will never be as open and closed as it used to be.
With that said, I continue to love the Patriots and will always do so. I mean, I live in MA, so I kind of have to like them lol.
I went to TCU, back in the dark ages, and I've been a casual supporter of the team for many years. They had a great run last year, and made it to the finals before Georgia beat the snot out of them.
My favorite team from TCU was the group that went to the Rose Bowl and surprised a lot of people by winning against Wisconsin.
Gary Patterson put together a lot of great teams while he was there. Don't know if Sonny Dykes will be able to match him, over time, but he sure had a fine first season.
Seahawks! Grew up near the Rams before the moved back to California but they were always shitty, and my only other options for teams were the Bears and Colts, and I've never liked them either, so I just picked the team of a city I liked when I was a kid and have been a Seahawks fan ever sense.
Go Birds!
Grew up in the Philadelphia area and my father was a huge Eagles fan. When you live in Philly you always know about the sports teams whether you want to or not. It's part of culture and I wouldn't want it any other way.
So who were they? If you don’t mind saying. (Clemson fan since I set foot on campus as a sophomore transfer…Tommy Bowden era)
Seahawk fan here!! I have always loved football and back in the day before there was a Seahawk team we watched the Raiders. I went to a Seahawk game their inaugural year, it was against the Cowboys and they stomped us. I was 9. Its been a wild ride with the Seahawks but I love them forever and always.