When is it time to give up a sports team?

[OldRightHander]

I have a few thoughts. You can't change where you're from. I'm from Cincinnati, so if Cincinnati has a team in a sport, I don't see how I have much choice. I root for my home. Rooting for a different team would be like rooting for a different country in the Olympics. if one of my teams is stinking, I might stop watching as much, but I won't switch my loyalties to another team.

[Kingspoint]

I have a few thoughts. You can't change where you're from. I'm from Cincinnati, so if Cincinnati has a team in a sport, I don't see how I have much choice. I root for my home. Rooting for a different team would be like rooting for a different country in the Olympics. if one of my teams is stinking, I might stop watching as much, but I won't switch my loyalties to another team.

The Ohio Battery's in the Civil War have great stories. They were a loyal folk. Though at first it wasn't sure which side they were going to fight for, at least in Cincinnati.

[KronoRed]

When you're a Cubs fan.

That's when it's time to give up on life in general.

[OldRightHander]

Every team I root for has some sort of connection with Cincinnati. The Reds and Bengals are obvious. With hockey it's the Blues because when the Stingers folded up and I was trying to pick an NHL team, Mike Liut ended up playing for them and since I had watched him play for Cincinnati, it made sense. I pull for Liverpool in the EPL because when I found out there was a team called the Reds, that did it for me. It's really pretty simple. The only exception might be college football with OSU, but that's because I grew up 50 miles away in Brown County and most everyone out there then were Buckeye fans rather than UC.

[Puffy]

Chris Paul is nice, but give Anthony Davis a chance. He does 3-4 things a game that seem impossible. He is sooooooo good.

Oh, I agree. I still root for New Orleans but could leave the Knicks.

I hate James Dolan........

[M2]

If you leave, you can never come back.

Not true. I walked away from the Reds back in 2007. Never really replaced them with anyone else. I'm back.

As to the larger question, once upon a time I used to be a massive Redskins fan, but I gave up the team when I stopped caring about football. Seems to me it's a tricky proposition to fully give up a team if you continue to follow the sport closely. It probably helps to be in a different city. For instance, if I was looking for a new football team there's the New England Patriots down the highway. They seem to be all right. Football teams also might be easier to chuck aside in some ways. The roster turnover in that sport is pretty fierce, particularly on the bad teams. If you can hold out a few years, very few of the players you once nominally rooted for still will be around.

[gilpdawg]

For instance, the ball that slipped thru the fingers of Sean Dawkins at the end of the AFC title game loss to the Steelers didn't hurt nearly as bad as if that had happened to the Bengals.

As someone who is still haunted by that loss 18 years later....it was Aaron Bailey, not Dawkins. Thanks for bringing that up.

[Kingspoint]

Now is not the time to be giving up on the Bucs, and I also don't understand it as they've done pretty well since Sam Wyche's days there.

From Rotoworld w/ Rotoworld comments:

Bucs agreed to terms with C Evan Dietrich-Smith, formerly of the Packers, on a four-year, $14.25 million contract.

One of free agency's most aggressive teams has gotten better again. Dietrich-Smith has been one of the league's better centers since taking over for Jeff Saturday down the stretch in 2012, grading out as Pro Football Focus' No. 8 middle man in 2013. He's a major improvement on Jeremy Zuttah for a team that wants to run the ball early and often. If there's a knock, it's that EDS' track record is just 25 starts long, but he's still only 27.

[IslandRed]

As to the larger question, once upon a time I used to be a massive Redskins fan, but I gave up the team when I stopped caring about football. Seems to me it's a tricky proposition to fully give up a team if you continue to follow the sport closely. It probably helps to be in a different city. For instance, if I was looking for a new football team there's the New England Patriots down the highway. They seem to be all right. Football teams also might be easier to chuck aside in some ways. The roster turnover in that sport is pretty fierce, particularly on the bad teams. If you can hold out a few years, very few of the players you once nominally rooted for still will be around.

There's some truth to that. My experiences have gone both ways. I was a Reds fan growing up, a far stronger Reds fan than I was a fan of any NFL team. So I'm still here, and although there were periods where I wasn't a fan so that anyone would notice, I never switched allegiances. But my football allegiances have shifted. First, I was a lukewarm 49ers fan -- more of an admirer of the Walsh-Montana axis, really -- that became a bigger fan out of having to defend myself before and during that Super Bowl when 95% of my dorm was rooting for the Dolphins. When I moved to Jacksonville at the same time they were ramping up the expansion team, I gradually became a fan without meaning to.

But after leaving Jacksonville, it was like you said -- one day I realized I didn't know who they were playing on Sunday and I didn't really care, because everybody who'd been anybody was gone, and the new crew was not just mediocre, they were beyond boring. I didn't shift to the new hometown team, though. I was living in Nashville, but as a Jags fan the Titans were the enemy, so that was never really an option. Now I'm back in Florida. Maybe I'll start paying attention to the Jaguars again and maybe I won't. Haven't so far.

I guess when it comes right down to it, there are allegiances that are part of your self-identification -- even if they have placed in inactive status -- and there are allegiances that aren't held that deeply.

[IslandRed]

I'll also add this, and it relates to shifting allegiances of college and pro alike: It's almost impossible to care deeply about two teams at the same time if there's any possibility they'll have to play each other. Once you root against a team, it is never quite the same after that.