Not a Random Fandom

It's Friday. And to that, all I can add is ta da!

Linked above is Dusty Sloan's Fan Friday article on the UFL's website. It was awesome being chosen for the piece, and a bit of a surprise, too. I'm hoping this won't come off as narcissistic, but I wanted to expand on something at the end.

Fandom is a funny thing. Back in the early days of sports you didn't have much of an option but to root for the home team. It's not like you were going to listen to the 1870 Red Stockings' games on the radio. And in 1926, the NFL's Hartford Blues were still siting around wondering when people would invent the TV so they could show up on it.

"You're from HDNet? What's an HDNet? And get that strange motorcar off of the pitch. What in the world is a DeLorean anyway? Just take the picture and be off, ye vagabond."

So I'm from New England, and yet I'm not a Pats fan. There are a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I wasn't even into football until I picked up Tecmo Super Bowl as an impressionable youth in 1991. Anyone ever try to play that game as the Patriots? They have a middling ground game and an abyssmal pair of QBs --by the game's standards at least, which I add because my father still holds Steve Grogan as one of his favorite players. Put simply, I wasn't about to beat my cousin (who owned the game and the Nintendo) with his QB Bills (Jim Kelly) and Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed.

Slight tangent: I'm not sure why he wasn't a Pats fan either. We lived in the same town. And he looks like John Elways, which you'd think would've pushed him towards the Broncos.

So, who was I going to play as? Well, I briefly tried out the Packers because I liked Don Majkowski's name. That didn't go so well. What next?

"Grah! I am evil Randall Cunningham!"

The team and player pictured to the right were next.

QB Eagles was a freak of nature. He only had one good receiver to throw to (Fred Barnett), but that was fine. That was all he needed.QB Eagles would drop back to pass, and if the 100-yard bomb wasn't an option, he would run like hell, end zone to end zone for the TD. This player was not a man. He was a shadow creature that fed on the nightmares of defensive players and had been spawned from a dimension of pure darkness.

Oh, and Reggie White and the rest of the "D" was pretty good too. But who really played this game for the defense? If you weren't throwing the ball at least 40 yards or zig-zagging with your speediest back you were playing wrong.

I think that for a little while I'd actually convinced myself that Cunningham really could do all of that stuff. He ran for more yards in 1990 than the rest of the Eagles runningbacks did that year. Today I still don't want to disbelieve it. Of course, 91' was also when Cunningham's ACL was torn. Theoretically I never really got to see the best of him out on the field.

In a nutshell, I ended up rooting for a team I'd only barely been aware of previously, from a state/town I lived several hundred miles away from because of a player who I thought was Superman incarnate. (to be fair, he wasn't far off athletically from his video game likeness.) All this based on a video game. I still like the Eagles. They're my NFL team and they're rivals with the Dallas Cowboys, whom I despise. Nothing is going to change that.

But damn if it isn't different when you're a fan of a team that actually lives and breathes on the ground your own feet have tread. The place you call home. The Colonials are part of where I grew up. The Hartford area has been hit in similar ways to Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and many of the rust belt cities. Not as hard, perhaps, but if you live there you can feel it. You know it. Hartford's population has dropped in the past twenty years. The crime rate is high.This is a city that is fighting for something to be proud of. East Hartford, where Rentschler field is, and where I'll finally admit I'm originally from, feels the same effects. It's down but not out, and whatever its flaws I will defend it.

The Colonials are now part of my town, playing in a stadium that could have housed the Patriots. I'm not even a Pats fan. I don't feel betrayed. It's more that I pine for what could have been. The economic opportunities and prestige of a pro sports organization could do great things for the place. If you think that hasn't been on anyone's mind, Let me remind you of the Whalers.

Have you seen me?

The cult of the Whalers is still very much alive in Hartford. I have friends in the area who still talk about the team. Hell, the area's AHL team just changed its name to the Whale. If that isn't an indication that the average Connecticutian is painfully aware of that hole in the middle of the state where the professional hockey team used to be, I don't know what is.

So that is part of the reason I am a dyed-in-the-wool Colonials fan. The UFL can be our league, the Colonials our team if we support them. I'm glad they decided to settle down in the place I grew up, and I hope that the league and the city will both benefit and prosper from the partnership.