Rooting Interests

By Guest Blogger Rob Yunich:

Some people around Washington, D.C., bleed burgundy and gold and some bleed red, white and blue. Folks in Pittsburgh bleed black and gold (which pretty much covers the three professional teams) and other further north bleed Red Sox Red. And, in the heart of North Carolina, you can either pick Tar Heel Blue or Duke Blue. There is no in-between.

For me, there is a very firm pecking order when it comes to sports rooting interests. I love the Washington Capitals and Syracuse University basketball.

I’m a fan of the Washington Redskins and Wizards, the Baltimore Orioles as well as other Syracuse teams. And, it seems, my favorite football team these days is the Tokyo Wasabi Bombs, my fantasy football squad.

But hockey rules by a mile. I do enjoy watching other professional sports, but there’s no comparison. I’ve even created an entire hierarchy of teams. For example, I will never root for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, New York Rangers, or New Jersey Devils (the Caps’ old Patrick Division rivals). If they’re playing each other, I root against Pittsburgh. Some people may say this has to do with the Alex Ovechkin-Sidney Crosby rivalry, but local hockey fans know that the Penguins were tormenting the Caps long before Ovechkin came along.

Second to the Caps, my sports zealousness belongs to the SU men’s basketball team. There is nothing like watching a Big East game, especially when SU plays Georgetown or U-Conn.

But, unlike many others, it’s getting much harder to watch football, mainly because there’s only 11 minutes of action per 60 minutes of elapsed time (according to the Wall Street Journal). And baseball is so extremely slow, it’s dropping down my favorite sports to watch (although rooting against the New York Yankees will never get old).

So there’s no picking between pro and college. It’s all about how the game flows and how easy it is to stay interested for the entire contest.

You can read more of Rob’s work at Storming the Crease!