My Teams

Okay, we all saw my picks in the last entry for the NFL. I would now like to provide my readers with a view of the teams I root for in sports and why. My teams are the New York Jets, the New York Yankees, the Manhattan Jaspers, the Boston Celtics, the West Virginia Mountaineers, and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

I will initially begin with my team of most recent allegiance: The Pittsburgh Penguins. My roommate in sophomore and junior year of high school had firm cheering teams. He became a Patriots fan in 2001 when Tom Brady became the starter (claiming he rooted for Tom Brady while he was the University of Michigan...this was after he abandoned his Cowboys allegiance), he became a San Antonio Spurs fan when they drafted Tim Duncan for the reasons he became a Patriots fan (followed Duncan at Wake Forest), and the only legitimate fan hood I would give him would be the Yankees...but his favorite player is A-Rod. A-Rod is nobody's favorite player. So all in all you can see that my roommate is what we call....a frontrunner. So having all these teams to root for and no sturdy hockey allegiances I decided to root for the Pittsburgh Penguins after they drafted Sidney Crosby. I mean think about it, Sidney Crosby is one year younger than me and is probably more successful than I will ever be in my life. The kid is just nasty as a player. The big question lies though that if Sidney leaves the Penguins do I still root for him or do I root for the franchise...I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

My next team, the Boston Celtics, dates way back to the days of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parrish, and Dennis Johnson. I just remember growing up and hating the Lakers, hating the Bulls, and hating the Pistons. My dad told me that Larry Bird was the greatest player the game had ever seen. Suprisingly, fifteen years later I told my dad I was a Celtics fan and he didn't have the slightest clue as to why I would be. My dad turned out to be a Knick fan and hates the Celtics. That left me scratching my head for awhile. After many years of disappointment from the NBA, its nice to see the Celtics might finally regain that championship form that had abandoned them since the 80s. My favorite NBA player...Kevin Garnett...was traded to them during the offseason. It has restored hope to Celtic Nation. However, its just unfortunate that this team has to play in Boston. If they go on to win the NBA Championship you can only imagine how even more obnoxious that city will be.

Manhattan College is my alma mater. I am currently a senior there right now, so the term alma mater is actually a few months away for me. I used to be the voice of the crowd, being that obnoxious...but tasteful fan in the bleachers. Manhattan should have been close to being considered a top 25 team this year. Bobby Gonzalez ruined that one for us. Our All-MAAC guard Jeff Xavier now plays for Providence, our suspended power forward C.J. Anderson transferred to Xavier and is starting for them, and our starting center Arturo Dubois...well I dont know where Party Artie went, but wherever he is....he's not play Division I college basketball. It was supposed to be a year of promise, and now I am here in my senior year watching not a single player who was here during my freshman year. Its hard at times to get excited for them. Its the school pride that flows within your veins though that keeps you going out there. That and our win streak versus Iona. Iona is terrible. I have a good story about a Manhattan-Iona game a couple of years ago.

The West Virginia University is my excuse to root for a school that has a college football team. Also, my dad's best friend Frank sent all three of his kids to the fine institution. So I got adopted into a college football community. In my teen years, I received crash courses in Couch Burning 101, Tales of the Pre-game Pit 213, and Major Harris History 354. It kills me to not have gone to a school with a good college football team. Hell, I didnt even apply to one. I also follow them in basketball which kills my sister and father, the girl who graduated from Villanova, and the man who wants to be Mr. Villanova. My logic is simple...Manhattan vs. Villanova in basketball...my dad spent more money on a Villanova education so he wears the $35,000 hat over the $28,000 hat. So I take a neutral side and root for the Mountaineers. Imagine being at the Big East tournament with a die hard Villanova fan wearing a West Virginia hat. Imagine that Villanova fan after Mike Gansey got fouled with 00.1 seconds left on the clock, and he hitting the foul shot to win the game. Now imagine that Villanova fan walking past a group of WVU fans singing Country Roads. Yeah, she wasn't happy and my WVU fanhood was complete at that point. I made it a point to at some point in my life experience the Mountaineer Stadium gameday.

I have been rooting for the Yankees from the day I was born. I am what you say a non-bandwagon Yankees fan. I call out fans for stupid opinions. My favorite Yankee was Donnie Baseball...anyone who says a post-96 Yankee besides Pettitte, O'Neill, or Williams I automatically question. Yankee fans are probably the most fake fans in the Major Leagues. We just expect to win the World Series every year. We cry over losing in the first round of the playoffs. Please, after this season and after the 2005 season we were just lucky to even be there. The Yankees fans are like the USA of baseball. We are greedy. We expect the best and when the best doesnt happen it destroys us. Then you have fans of the Pirates, the Devil Rays, and for lack of a better team the Milwaukee Brewers. These fans would kill for even a playoff berth. The Yankees are the greatest sports franchise in history. I love them for it. I just hate how obnoxious and stupid our fans are at times. I hate how these fans call me a fake Yankee fan for hating the Mets more than the Red Sox. They use the 'oh its New York' argument. The hell with that. In the 1950s that wouldn't have flied with any Yankee fan. The Red Sox were a rival, not the main enemy. The enemy was the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yankee-Red Sox rivalry is only good if both teams are playing well. Thats why you didn't hear anything about it until 1999 when they played each other in the ALCS. I hate Boston too, I am not letting them off the hook. They are another bane of my existence. The Mets being halfway decent is good though. You now see the Yankee bandwagon getting smaller and the real fans coming back out. Its about time, we've missed you over the last decade.

Rooting for a team with such great success needs to be balanced out by a team with such great disappointment. The New York Jets are the love of my life. They are the reason I wake up from September through January. Every year, this team breaks my heart time and time again. You want a good psychoanalysis project...dissect the mind of a Jets fan. We won the most important football game of all time, and haven't had anything to show for it since. It seems like when we have 'the team' that something always has to go wrong. Its so painful, but I always have used the same mantra...wait till next year. My friends are taking bets on my reaction to the Jets winning the Super Bowl. If they ever do. I really don't know what I would do. Part of me feels I might just sit in my seat and cry a little bit, because I almost feel I might not ever be that happy again in my sports fan life. I mean this team has given me such heartache in my life. I was ridiculed by my friends for sticking through it with them in 1995 and 1996, the Kottite years. They might have been the two worst years of my life to date. I live for the names of Martin, Chrebet, Mawae, Coles, Victor Green, Mo Lewis. Great Jets players. Kerry Rhodes, Al Toon, Marvin Jones. I could go on for hours just talking about this team. I love them. There is so much that goes on with being a Jets fan. You guys will soon find out what that is very quickly.

Those are my teams. Over the years, you will become even more attached to my mind and why I root for them. We have good times ahead, hopefully my teams can just get better and I can have some peace in my life.

Biggest fan of the best 3-11 team of all time (-Jeff Fisher),
The Conzz