Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I read so many different responses and opinions on here, and the one thing I frequently end up asking myself is "I wonder what team he roots for?"

Now I'm not necessarily asking who you currently root for. I want to know who YOUR team is. The era of your team that you fondly look back on. The squad that set your allegiance and made you a fan for life.

For me, growing up in Wisconsin in the 90's made it a no-brainer. Ron Wolf, Mike Holmgren, Brett Favre, Reggie White, Sterling Sharpe... Holmgren's Packers will always be the team that drew me in to football and the team that I look back on most fondly.

What's yours?

I once asked this question under the thread title "What colors do you bleed?"
I got zero response. Let's see how much luck we have this time....

I was born in Pittsburgh and the family moved to San Francisco when I was young.
So, my AFC team is the Steelers and my NFC team is the 49ers.
The 1970's and 1980's were very, very good to me (football fan-wise).

I tend to enjoy learning about different teams in different eras.
I "root" for the Lions of the '50's, the Browns of the late '40's, the Bears of the 30's and early 40's, the Packers and Chiefs of the 60's, etc etc etc.

Since I started learning about football history I can find something to "cheer" about for almost every franchise/team.

The only team that leaves me cold is the Bengals.
They were founded by Paul Brown. They play in Ohio. They wear orange and brown... do we really need a second Cleveland Browns?

No big surprise here, but for me it is the Cleveland Browns of the 50's and 60's.

I did not like football at first. It all seemed like 3 yards and a cloud of dust. It seemed boring to me. Then one Sunday in 1951, I turned on a Browns game. I loved the way they played and soon became a fan.

After 1970, most of the Paul Brown coaches and players were gone and it was really Art Modell's team. My interest wasn't as much after that.

My earliest football memories include watching a game in the basement of our house in Plymouth, Minnesota, and my dad explaining to me the difference between a live and dead ball n returns. We were watching a game between the Vikings and Buccaneers. And watching Fran Tarkenton scramble for his life in a game against the Cowboys. My fondest memory is Ahmad Rashad and Tommy Kramer and the Miracle at the Met against the Browns.

Minnesota Vikings

Born in 1967, so for me it was the Miami Dolphins in the early 70's. Playing football when we were little, I would tell my buddy/buddies, go long and I'll throw my Bob Griese bomb. Also, loved O.J., but what little boy back then didn't love "The Juice" and his Hertz commercials were really cool. Liked the Vikings to back then in the 70's, and to some degree the Cowboys as my grandfather loved the Cowboys. Became a Giants fan around 1978 or 1979 and still am. LOVE the 1946-1955 Browns, and the 1930's Giants.I remember as a kid, me and my buddy thought football was a lot cooler from the 1950's on back as it was "meaner" back then in the old days we thought. We always wanted to know about the "old" days from my grandfather and my buddy's dad as we loved the players and just wanted to know about football from way back then.

Miami Dolphins 1981-2004. I would say around the time Ricky Williams retired, I was really more interested in history than I was being a fan of one team. I’m not sure if it was ’04, but that’s a rough guess. I was already transitioning to being a more casual fan by then because the last time I recall taking a loss hard was in the ’94 playoffs against the Chargers, so my run was around 13 years, a lot of good memories. The first that comes to mind is a 12-18-82 win over the Jets watching on TV with my grandfather.

I only root for the Jets because my father did. One of the things I learned as a 2nd grader was that there is something wrong with the Jets. I heard all kinds of commotion from my father when they blew a 20-3 lead over the Patriots in 1984. That is the first season I closely followed the sport.

I have seen division rivals go to the Super Bowl 16 times since 1984. No division has sent more teams to the Super Bowl than the AFC East since then but, of course, I am still waiting for the Jets first trip.

Buffalo Bills. My parents are Bills fans. My grandparents were Bills fans. My aunt and uncle are Bills fans and my uncle worked on sports broadcasting in WNY (worked with Van Miller for a little while). It is in my blood.

My love for the Vikings dates back to 1967 when I was 8 years old. The main reason is Bud Grant’s status as a local legend here in Winnipeg and, secondly, the Vikes are the team that is closest in proximity to us.

1967 was a perfect storm for my becoming a football fan in general and a Vikings fan in particular. My dad took me to my first two Winnipeg Blue Bombers games that season and that was also the season that Bud Grant left us to take the Vikings job. Dad, like all local football fans, worshiped Bud so he became a Vikings fan and what was good enough for my dad was good enough for me. The fact that the Purple Gang began a long run as a powerhouse a year later, and for the most part have remained a contender ever since, has only made my devotion grow over the decades.

I’m 61 now and I “pray” that I will one day see my Vikings hoist the Lombardi trophy.

Jets. Just the closest and most familiar team to me as a gained consciousness of pro football. It has resulted in the blackening of my soul and the loss of all optimism, but I will remain with them through any and all future misery they plan on perpetrating.

Not sure if there will ever be a payoff. I can only think back to the Cubs finally winning a World Series and scenes of elderly widows holding up portraits of their die hard Cubs fans husbands to television sets as Chicago won Game 7 and wondering if that ultimately is my fate

I see so much spoiled rotten behavior from fans of teams that have won within the past decade or three. Just one at this point will give me enough mileage to bask in the afterglow for a very very long time.