Walking back from my friend’s Super Bowl party several Sundays ago, I watched my (slightly drunk) roommate parade down Massachusetts Avenue in full Giants regalia. The hollowing feeling of “that could have been me” suddenly overwhelmed me. But that’s not because I am a bitter Patriots fan. It’s because I have the unfortunate disposition of being a New York Jets fan.
I was born in northern New Jersey to a mother, who is a Mets and Jets fan from New York, and a father, who is a Red Sox fan from Connecticut. It doesn’t take a Pundit Square to see that with my hometown roots and the influence of my parents’ interests, I was likely to grow up rooting for the Jets and either the Mets, Red Sox, or both.
The Patriots and Giants franchises both serve as painful reminders of the Jets’ failures, the former an adversary we can never overcome and the latter an overachieving sibling in a two-team city. And yet these stances I hold, these deep rooted sports complexes I carry, are the sources of an incalculable number of debates with friends and can lead to fights with strangers.
During my formative years, I could have easily decided to pick the other New York area team, or in an ultimate act of familial defiance, a division rival or a team with a sharp color scheme that complemented my eyes. Any of those reasons would have at least been a self-directed choice. But much like my nose, my affinity for the Jets is from my mom’s gene pool. And just as I inherited my father’s easily-tanned Middle Eastern skin, I got his love for the Red Sox. It’s a startling revelation that something I am so incredibly passionate about (when the Jets lose I mope around for at least a day or two) was, more or less, predetermined by family and geographic influence.
But it’s hard to avoid falling into these rooting tendencies; games are broadcasted in regional networks and usually feature the local teams, and when I think back my fondest sports memories were the ones with my parents by my side. Despite only being 9 years old at the time, I vividly remember seeing my first MLB game in 1999 at Fenway Park with my dad and his brothers, and staying up until midnight to see the Sox complete the World Series sweep in 2004. Or screaming at the television every cold weather Sunday with my mom as we watched the Jets grab defeat from the jaws of victory.
I surveyed a small sample of the Northeastern community – 76 people – and asked them their favorite team from each of the three major professional American sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA) and the main reasons they liked those teams. Respondents could choose more than one reason for fandom. Among the responses from individuals that identified themselves as casual or passionate fans for each respective sport, 63 people cited geography (they are the local team for their area) and 33 chose a family member’s favorite team.
Overall, 70 cited either one or both of these two choices as the primary influence as to why they support the team that they do. The next most frequently-chosen option was because said team is successful with roughly 10 responses.
That’s a tiny sample size containing a narrow section of mostly Boston, New York and Philadelphia fans, but there is a visible trend. Fandom is something you are born into, whether biologically or through the community you grow up in. It’s a rare instance where both nature and nurture prevail.
It also makes me think about the legitimacy of my fanhood. If I’d grown up in my dad’s native Connecticut would I be a Patriots fan? Or would my mom’s New York roots have prevailed?
We can play the hypothetical game all day, but the real takeaway here is this: If you want your kids’ favorite team to be a winner, don’t raise children in Buffalo.
– Dylan Lewis can be reached at [email protected]
