Why Football and Baseball?

I was trying to figure out the other day why football and baseball stand so far above my other sports choices. I used to like both the NBA and NHL a lot more than I do now, so I wondered what happened?

I realize that I never have really liked the Timberwolves. Growing up, the Lakers were my team. They had Wilt and Jerry West and were easily the best team in basketball for a number of years. They were also broadcast the most because of that. They were always featured on ABC's game of the week. And they were great. That their greatest rival was the Bucks with Kareem and Oscar Robertson made viewing them even better.

We had the GOPHERS as our local team, and at the time, they were always contending for the Big Ten title. Michael Thompson and Kevin McHale made sure of that. When McHale joined the Celtics with Larry Bird, I suddenly had another favorite team. My Lakers had become Kareem and Magic and they were now big rivals of the Celtics. NBA life had never been better for me.

The introduction of the Wolves kind of fouled up everything. I wanted to like them, but let's face it, they just weren't any good. Ever. I grew up watching the best in the Lakers, Bucks, and Celtics (and the Gophers in college) and suddenly I was given a local team that was nothing but losers.

It's hard to switch allegiance for something like that. And I never really have. Instead of liking them, they (along with the now awful Gophers) made me sick of basketball. I started to notice bad ref calls affecting more close games than I liked. I also started to notice that hard contact was now ignored a lot more than it used to be. The game changed for the worse. My team changed for the worse. My desire for viewing basketball simply left me over time. And its never came back.

My NHL story is briefer. I liked the Stars as a kid. They moved because of a stupid owner who couldn't control his sexual harassment desires, and the new team, the Wild, never became MY team. They've never been really good either.

I grew up with the Vikings and Twins. They are still here. The Twins play in the summer when nothing else is on TV, so it's easy to follow them, almost every game is broadcast and doesn't have competition for my viewing.

The Vikings play most of their games on Sunday afternoons. There's no competition with other TV shows then, either. Football and baseball have everything going for them. Plus both the Vikes and Twins have had tons of history in winning. Not so much lately, but they were good in the past, so I can still give them a pass.

Finally, I am proudly a bandwagon fan. I always have been. The Vikings, the Twins, and the Gophers were great every year when I was young. They built a bond with me that's hard to break. If you lose long enough (like the Gophers) eventually that bond will be broken.

The Twins and Vikings are still my teams. For now. That could change, but my 50 plus year investment in them will make that break harder. A winning season or two, and I'll be off and running again for another 40 years.