Sports and Marriage

It has been a long time since I have cared anything about the NHL. From what I can tell, I'm in the majority. The sport has suffered from inexplicable expansion and an awful television deal with Vs. As a southern boy, hockey is not an important sport locally and rarely mentioned unless someone has been brutally bloodied in a brawl.

For the last week, however, I have returned to being a hockey fan for one reason: my favorite team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, are in the conference finals with a chance to play for the Stanley Cup. When some Penguin I have never heard of scored a goal past some Flyers goalie I have never heard of, I jumped off the sofa with excitement and pumped my fist with a fan's satisfaction.

As much as I am currently excited about the NHL, this article is not about hockey. It is about the fact that I consider myself a Pittsburgh Penguins fan. Why is a Chattanooga kid a fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins? And how can I go from caring nothing about the team to setting up my week around Games 3 and 4 in such a flash?

The simple, and sad, answer is the same one that explains my loyalty to the Dallas Cowboys and Boris Becker. In fact, let's take a second to look at several of my loyalties as we psycho-analyze my peculiar preferences and what they mean:

Tennessee Vols - Easy one. My dad is a UT graduate and rabid Vols fan. We had season tickets to football games when I was a kid, would occasionally drive up to see good basketball games (the word "occasional" describes the frequency of our trips and the freaquency of good Vols basketball games) and attended all types of local Vols functions like spring football and women's SEC tournament games. Some of my earliest memories are the Sugar Bowl against Miami and going to a UT/Vanderbilt basketball game at Memorial Coliseum when I was probably six years old. I'm a Vol because of my dad.

Atlanta Braves - Pretty much the same story as my dad is a big Braves fan. The difference here is TBS. The Braves were always on TV, so like many Braves fans I got attached to the team by familiarity. Back in the 1980s, the Cubs and Braves were always on. Some people got attached to the Cubs; I got attached to Dale Murphy and the Braves. The 90-minute drive from Chattanooga to Atlanta helped too.

Dallas Cowboys - I liked the star on the helmet. Seriously. That is it. When I was a kid, the Cowboys were good, not great. Danny White. Tony Dorsett. Randy White. Too Tall Jones. Tom Landry. Good, not great. Then, the Cowboys were just awful. Gary Hogeboom awful. I stuck with them for the simple reason that I like the helmet. They are still my team today for that reason.

Pittsburgh Penguins - Same story. I liked the Penguins logo and the black/yellow color combination. I used to watch highlights on SportsCenter and liked the skating penguin. From there, I became a fan of Super Mario, Jaromir Jagr, Ron Francis, Sergei Zubov and the rest. I was an excited little kid when the Penguins swept the Blackhawks for the Cup, probably the only Chattanoogan who cared a thing about it.

Tennessee Titans - I was not a Houston Oilers fan, but when the Titans moved to Nashville and became a contender, I jumped on-board. This is an interesting one because I did not follow them during their one year in Memphis or through the Chris Chandler years. They were close in proximity, but not as close as the Falcons. They were on television here every Sunday, but so were the Falcons. The only difference is that they were a winning franchise and Atlanta was not. Proximity + victories = fan loyalty.

Phoenix Suns - Steve Nash. I did not like them before Nash (never cared when Jason Kidd or Stephon Marbury ran the team) and expect I won't like them when he is gone. I like the entire team because I like Steve Nash.

Muhammad Ali - I read a book about him and fell in love. I always pulled for Joe Frazier when I watched replays of the Thrilla in Manila, but after reading Thomas Hauser's biography on Ali, I became a passionate fan of the man and boxer.

Greg Norman - Norman was probably the best golfer of his time, but rubbed lots of people wrong and, of course, choked away a few major championships. I loved Norman's look, especially the cheesy hats he wore (my dad even sported one for a while, though I don't remember him being a Norman fan). I tried the Norman follow-through for years, slamming irons against my back after contact. With Norman, the appeal was pretty much the same as the Cowboys and Penguins - purely visual.

Boris Becker - He was left-handed. I am left-handed. There you go.

(My memory failed me here - Becker was not left-handed. Now I have no idea why I liked him).

Rather than simply being a self-indulgent sports biography, I think my odd collection of athletic loyalties basically boils down to three things - proximity, personal affection and appearance. The first explains my loyalty to the Vols (my dad went to Tennessee because he grew up in Chattanooga), Braves and Titans. Personal affection explains my support for the Suns and Muhammad Ali. These are both predictable and understandable reasons for fandom.

Appearance, however, as a reason to support a team or person is superficial, silly and stupid. I pulled for Jimmy Johnson, Jerry Jones and Barry Switzer because I liked the helmets? I copied The Shark's swing because of his hat? Appearance in sports, beit uniforms, batting stance or facial hair, is a vital part of any fan's make-up. It is embarrassing to admit, but sometimes years of heartbreak and elation comes down to the right color combination or mascot.

In many ways, choosing a sports team is like choosing a wife. This has been on my mind since my wedding anniversary last week. Four years in the books; hopefully many more in the future.

It all boils down to three things - proximity, personal affection and appearance. I fell in love with my wife because a) she lived in the same town as me, so I met her b) she had personal qualities like kindness, intelligence and honesty that appealed to me and c) I found her physically attractive.

In fact, choosing my sports' marriages were some of the first times in my life when I made any real choice of preferences. With hundreds of teams to choose from, I narrowed it down to these few. Over the years, I stuck with them through thick and thin, good times and bad, injuries and salary cap limitations and will be with them until I'm gone. My sports loyalities prepared me for marriage better than anything else. Before Martha came along, I had years of practice with this marriage thing even if I didn't realize it until I found myself cheering like crazy last night after seeing my first Penguins goal of the season. Sports fandom, like marriage, is forever.

Unless, of course, I neglect Martha like I neglected the Pens from around 1998 until last week in which case she will leave me faster than Sidney Crosby skating up the ice on a breakaway...