Rooting for bad teams..

Man, I wish I could be a "front-runner" fan. You know those guys - the ones with the T-shirts and jackets on with the winning team logo on - yet if you ask them anything, they don't know squat about the team. No, I have to settle on rooting for some either outright dreadful teams, or one that has given me heartbreak the past few years.

Living in New York (or more precise -Long Island), I quickly picked up on being a Met fan from my grandfather. It also didn't help much that my father was a Yankee fan. So of course I had to be tormented with those many World Series titles and countless "we're better than you" taunts from the rest of my family. The past few years presented me with a chance of redemption - yet to see it fail miserably. In 2006, I was excited that the Mets could go all the way, only to see them fall to the Cardinals in Game 7 of the NLCS. And please don't get me started on the last two years - if I could develop a time machine, I would try to erase them!

Another love of mine happened to be because of where I lived. I was very lucky in my younger days of growing up about a block away from the Nassau Coliseum. This was during the four (4) Stanley Cup years of the great New York Islander dynasty. My father would take me just up the block and watch the victory parades each year. Bossy, Potvin, Smith, Nystrom... the names can go on and on. But sadly, it seemed the team started to falter when I moved away. Oh sure, there were some good years after that ('93 comes to mind, but that puke Dale Hunter ruined it), but many bad years as well - even so far as selling the team to an owner who had no money. Even today, they seem to a low-budget team trying to compete with the big guys. But no matter what - I still will root for my Islanders (hence, my OS name and xbox gamertag suggest).

My last "love" for a franchise is rather odd. Growing up in an area where there are two (2) football teams, you would have to think I would have chosen one of them. Well, you would be dead wrong. I root for a team that could be about as far west as one can go - the Oakland Raiders. Ok - stop the laughing. I have been rooting for them ever since I was about nine (9) years old, and I did a book report on the great Jim Plunkett. Over time, my favorite football players grew to be Marcus Allen, Bo Jackson, and Tim Brown. I've had some good luck with my "fandom" with these guys (made some nice coin off a friendly bet with my dad on who would reach the Super Bowl first - Jets or Raiders), but also run into the bizzare and down right awfulness of rooting for them (Al Davis ruining the team, poor records since their last Bowl appearance, and even that dreaded "tuck rule").

Sure, I've run into some bad luck with my teams. Watching others celebrate victory and championships while I sit and just think about the "could have and should have beens". But that is what sports is about - any team can win on any given day - and I would not trade my "losing rooting" for anything in the world.