Allegiances

 

US Bank Stadium, Home of the Vikings

I root for two football teams; the Minnesota Vikings and whoever is playing the Green Bay Packers. Last night as I watched with delight as the cheeseheads got bowled over for the seventh time this season, I started pondering the allegiances to various teams. The invisible borders that determine who to root for, who to root against, and how those decisions are made by happenstance but are then set in stone for a lifetime. 

My dad grew up in Minnesota and as far as I can tell, that is why I became a Vikings fan. Logically, it didn’t make sense to root for a team halfway across the country that hasn’t been to a Super Bowl since 1979 and always finds a way to choke away some of the greatest chances in football history. But since the age of seven, my earliest memory of listening to the Vikings beat the Cowboys on the AM radio, I have been a die hard supporter. As a grown man, I have cried three times directly due to Vikings games… twice in anger, once in joy.

And yet, just down the road from me are close friends who root for the Saints, the Seahawks, the Raiders, Broncos and a half dozen other teams with the same fervor that I have while screaming at the Vikings telecasts. At some long ago instant of our lives, we all made the decision to start cheering for a specific team and have stuck with that team for our entire lives. 

Maybe it was the influence of our parents, or a close friend. Maybe it was a favorite player, like Randy Moss, who’s jersey you got for your 11th birthday and you wore so many times the numbers peeled off. Sometimes, fandom was determined by location. If you are born and raised in Boston, you had better be a Patriots fan. Same goes for Chicago or Kansas City or any sports city. When I walk into US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis for a home game, surrounded by a sea of purple, I feel like I am part of a tribe. I feel accepted as a member of something greater than myself; a contributing member of a noise making mob that will be the final straw that determines whether our opponents can get a first down. 

Allegiance traces back to little details like the fact that my middle school football team was called the Wolverines after the University of Michigan Wolverines and therefore I have and will continue to root against Ohio State University forever. I have no idea of the quality of academics or whether either university successfully transitions student athletes into contributing members of our society. I will just dislike Ohio State because I made a choice in middle school. That judgment naturally extends to random strangers based on their association with schools or teams I dislike. I find myself avoiding certain places because of some unfortunate loss on a bad call back in 2006 that I watched on TV. Honestly, from a neutral perspective, these allegiances get completely out of hand. 

In the offseason, I realize that there is no good reason to dislike these people and places purely because they are competing against my chosen team. Just like walking through the handshake line after a softball game, when the clock is off, our opponents are just like us. Then I think about all the other aspects of life where we pick a team or a tribe and default into hating their opponent, even if ten minutes ago, we had no stake in the war. Sports teams spill over into video games, license plates, political parties and national borders; neighbors and relatives suddenly become enemies just because someone picked a side in an arbitrary fight. 

To be part of a tribe is to be included in something bigger than yourself. In the heat of the moment, when our team needs us, we need to stand strong with them. But when the battle is over, let’s remember that we are still neighbors, friends and inhabitants of the same planet. In the meanwhile, go Vikings and whoever is playing the Packers this week.