Pick a fucking team already!

I will not take your bait on discussing The Undiscussables other than to say the following: you are no longer welcome to root for them.

Look, Doyle. You listen here, and you listen good. I know you were born Canadian and therefore think a hardcore fan is something you turn on when it gets wicked hoot outside, but I will not have you switching directions on me as if you have once again contracted vertigo. You don't go cheering for the other team in that game I'm not talking about just because they're "exciting" or blacker or whatever. I'm never loaning you a jersey again so you can spill Buffalo sauce on it. Speaking of Buffalo, aren't you a fucking Bills fan? What happened to that? Now you're from San Diego, too? You're worse than Seahawk/Southwest/San Diego/Appomatox River Basin Seth. I don't know you kind of people.

Since I can't talk specifics, let's discuss a theory of mine. Not the Theory of Classy -- see Four Weeks for that -- but the Theory of Sporting Birthright. To wit: the minute a man is born, he's assigned a set of rooting interests based on the nearest professional sports franchises, and he must honor that commitment for the rest of his life, come Hades, Katrina, Joe Carter, or rampaging maple-tree diseases (oh, am I better than that last comment, Doyle? Do tell!). I believe in this. Exceptions will be made only in special circumstances, i.e. vacation births, parental Armed Forces deployment overseas and the like. Otherwise, you're stuck. You were born in Toronto, which doesn't have an NFL team? Too bad. Root for the Argos. Watch hockey. Pick the closest fucking NFL team. I thought you did that, with the Bills.

What you don't do is find some other city that you kind of like because it has hot chicks and beaches and lots of sporting mediocrity and you went to college 350 miles away from it and visited a couple of times, and then act as if you have any sort of right to root for that team when it becomes good every 12 years. I won't have that kind of shit, and I'm surprised the Brothers Finley have humored you this long. You pick your teams based on who your friends root for? Well, that's really sweet and all, but if you're so worried about my motherfucking mental state, maybe you should start by not encouraging my alcoholism and smoking and gambling and general degenerateness. Don't root for my team. Root for your own fucking team.

Hey, I've got friends who like other teams. Seth likes Seattle and the Finleys like SD and Chris likes the Jets and Dave likes the Cowboys, for chrissakes. And occasionally (never in Dave's case), when the outcome of their games in no way affects the future of The Team We Do Not Speak Of, I'll cheer for their teams and hope that they win. What I don't do -- and never will -- is talk about HOW FUCKING "TORN" I AM ABOOT WHO TO ROOT FOR IN GAMES INVOLVING TWO TEAMS I HAVE NO RIGHT TO ROOT FOR!

Explain this rooting for The Other Team. They're "exciting"? They're "a great story"? They're "fun"? If those are your criteria, go root for that retarded Louisville tuba player or a Beep Baseball team or something, and get the fuck out of here with your hand-wringing about who you're going to root for in the Super Bowl.

You're right about one thing: nobody who's not a die-hard Southeastern Pennsylvania professional football fan will agree with you. And because of that, nobody who roots for that team will agree with you, and I will not agree with you. You know why? Because THERE'S NO OTHER FUCKING KIND OF FAN OF THE TEAM IN QUESTION. We've been miserable our whole sporting existence and we've never had fairweather fans and we sure don't want them now. We don't want your kind here. People like you are the reason I'm afraid of that team ever winning anything significant.

So you root for whoever you want, chief. You do that. But never again don that holy shade of green in my presence. You have hereby been excommunicated.

Now go watch your soccer game and tell everybody at the bar how you live and die by Roma because you lived there for three months.