Free Agency

I didn’t grow up in a sports family. There was very little Sunday Afternoon Football or baseball in the summer. Most of my family at least watches the Cowboys each week but my parents weren’t into it. The extend of my sports participation as a young kid consisted primarily of bowling and one sad spring spent playing right field for a winless tee ball team. (That would make me the worst player on the worst team.) This all changed somewhere around the 3rd grade when, overnight, soccer became popular in my neighborhood and I started playing that. My real fire was lit, however, when my uncle’s took me to my first live sporting event, which turned out to be a Dallas Mavericks game. I was hooked.

Given that I didn’t really have any background in sports or parents to influence my decisions, I chose the teams for which I would root with very little thought to geography or tradition. I was a Mavericks fan, of course, which in those days was much harder than it is now. My first full season as a Mavs Fan For Life saw the team win 11 games, followed by a 13 win season. I was born into a West Texas family so even when I didn’t care about sports, Texas Tech was born into me and thus began my life as a Red Raider. The rest of my teams were chosen for very good reasons.

I started rooting for Ohio State because my best friend Kyle was from Ohio and I thought, what the heck, that sounds like fun. For the most part it has been fun, minus the last three January games of which I will not speak. To this day I don’t know if it was a replay or the actual game but once my dad happened to flick past a TV channel on which I caught Christian Laettner hitting the greatest shot in the history of college basketball (1992 East Regional Finals to beat Kentucky) and my Duke basketball fandom was born. I really didn’t like or get everything about the game of baseball, I just knew I didn’t like Juan Gonzalez or Jose Conseco so I chose the San Francisco Giants as my baseball team. Later, after their roid riddled years, I added the Rangers as my AL representative.

And I became a Raider fan because, truthfully, the Raiders were about the coolest team a boy could hope for. Their colors were edgy and menacing, the fans were CRAZY, they had Dallas legend Tim Brown, and their logo was a pirate. How could a 9 year old boy not like the Raiders? In addition, everyone I knew was a Cowboy fan and I never wanted to do anything everyone else was doing. In a sense, I adopted the renegade ideals of the organization.

I live by a few simple sports rules, which I put into a blog a couple of years ago called, “The Rules for a Sports Fan.” Unfortunately, the blog I wrote it on has been deleted and my computer got the Blue Screen of Death some time back, losing this column forever, but the rules still apply. These rules are simple but cover numerous fan-based conundrums. Things like prohibiting rooting for two teams in the same division or mixing clothing from two teams in the same sport. The most important rule, however, simply states that a fan CANNOT abandon a team.

There are very few legitimate exceptions to this rule. Losing is not an excuse. As I stated before, I was a Mavs fan during a decade that never saw them complete a winning season. Trading away your favorite player is not an excuse. In 1993 the Mavericks traded my all time favorite player, Derek Harper, to the New York Knicks. Moving to a new city is not a short term excuse. When I went to college I was in the heart of Razorback country and my hatred for the program persisted. For the most part, if you choose to root for a team, you root for them through wins and losses, thick and thin, championships and idiotic management. It’s pretty plain and simple.

If you do wish to abandon a team, you essentially have to prove that the team (or the team’s management) has abandoned you first. The most easily identified form of abandonment occurs when a franchise leaves a given city for another city. When this occurs every member of the team’s fan base gets an automatic option for Fan Free Agency, at which time any other team may be chosen. There are other exceptions, however. To keep this simple I’ll give three brief examples.

Your team makes consistent player moves that are CLEARLY designed only to save the owner money, not make the team better. Fans of the Phoenix Suns, Pittsburgh Pirates, or the Cleveland Indians during the movie “Major League” should feel free to take their time and money elsewhere;
Your team makes one majorly idiotic deal that not only hurts the team’s level of play, it also destroys the image or viewed atmosphere of the club. In 2003 the Knicks traded Latrell Sprewell, the heart and soul of the team and a guy who represented the last legs of the tough-as-nails image of the franchise, for Keith Van Horn, the softest player the league had ever seen. My love and interest in the team ended immediately;
Your team makes numerous moves over a number of years (at least five or more) that display a complete lack of knowledge of what is going on in the sport. This has to involve player acquisitions in free agency, trades, and draft as well as the consistent use (or misuse) of funds.

With that in mind, I am officially declaring myself an NFL Fan Free Agent, under Exception 3 listed above. For the last 6 years I have stood by the Oakland Raiders despite numerous attempts by the team to abandon me and the rest of Raider Nation. I have remained silent through the losses. I’ve stuck around despite the numerous occasions on which the Raiders signed or traded for a former star player now FAR past his prime. I shuddered but stood firm when the team traded too much for players, signed them for too much, and then promptly cut them. I watched as coaches were hired and fired with the frequency of a McDonald’s cashier. I openly questioned whether owner Al Davis was still alive and even theorized that he’d died some time ago but the rest of the organization didn’t know what to do so they strung him up like Bernie and made decisions with a dart board. But I stayed with them despite the many, many reasons to abandon ship.

That’s all over now. I was on the fence, considering making this agonizing decision, before the NFL Draft in April. For years, the joke about the Raiders has been that they will ALWAYS draft the most athletic player. Skill or ability to play in the NFL doesn’t really matter as long as the guy can run faster or throw the ball farther than anyone else. This notion came true once again when the Raiders passed on Michael Crabtree and drafted some dude named Darrius Heyward-Bey about 20 picks before he should have been drafted. In the second round, the Raiders drafted some guy that was literally projected to potentially not get drafted at all who, shockingly, is a freak of an athlete but probably has no football ability. This was all I could take. I hung my head in shame (cue the Charley Brown music) as my friends laughed and (rightly) mocked me as pick after pick, the Raiders looked stupider and stupider. I had this image of Al Davis rolling over in his grave and then remembered that his corpse has yet to be buried. It was the last straw.

It should be noted that I reserve the right to return to my Raider heritage when and if it is discovered that Al Davis is dead. So now that I am free of my Raider obligation, I have to pick a new team. That’s part of the deal. With the exception of a strike-shortened season during which you can abandon a sport altogether, if you declare your free agency, you must choose another team within 1 year. (I made that one up just now.) I’ve thought long and hard about this and I’m having trouble selecting my new team. I could NEVER be a Cowboy fan so the obvious, easiest choice is out. As such, I have come up with 5 teams that I need your help to choose from.

Arizona Cardinals - They have one of my all time favorite players (Larry Fitzgerald) and they play an exciting brand of football. On the other hand, they have been a historically bad team and I’m not sure I want to trade one bad team for another.

Pittsburgh Steelers - I have always had a great admiration for the Steelers. They’re kind of the anti-Raiders in that they follow their own pattern but they do it right. But I don’t want to be a bandwaggoner by jumping on board with a team that’s won 2 Super Bowls in 4 years.

Philadelphia Eagles - This would be an easy transition as the Eagles have kind of been my secondary team for a while now because, A.) I hate the Cowboys and B.) I love Donovan McNabb. The Michael Vick thing gives me pause, however, and they are due for about 5 years of terrible football in the near future.

San Francisco 49ers - This would be getting in on the ground floor with a team that may be absolutely horrible for a few more years. The Michael Crabtree thing will make a difference here. If he signs, I could be in but his not being on the team is a deal breaker.

New Orleans Saints - Again, I’m a fan of the pass-based offensive attack and the Saints certainly have that. There’s a lot of excitement on this team. But, they are a historically dysfunctional franchise and I really don’t want to go that route again.

There are no other teams that meet the criteria that I’m looking for in a franchise. As stated, this decision has been quite difficult and so I take it to you, dear readers. I will accept your arguments for or against any of the above 5 teams as you help me make a choice that will affect me for the rest of my life. Again, no other teams will be considered. If I can’t decide on a new team I’ll exercise my one year of free agency and root only for “Great Odin’s Raven” and “Texas With a Dollar Sign,” which are my two fantasy football teams. I appreciate your concern for my well being in this trying time.

I’m going to start using “Darrius Heyward-Bey” as a curse word,
Brian