Kinda been mulling this over in my head for a bit, wanted to start a topic on it. How did you come to root for the sports teams you root for?

Sure, the simple and most abundant answer will likely be that people root for their home town/state team. That is certainly the case for me for the Indianapolis Colts and the Indiana Pacers.

Indiana however, doesn't have an NHL or MLB franchise. Not a major league one anyway.

So in the NHL I root for the Colorado Avalanche. When I first started getting into hockey in my early teens, Colorado was good, so they were on TV a fair bit and that made them accessible. They also have some pretty cool jerseys. How can you not root for a team with a yeti print on their shoulder?

In baseball, I root for the Atlanta Braves. Growing up we had two stations that showed baseball games on the reg. WGN and TBS. WGN was based out of Chicago, so they showed a lot of Cubs games and the occasional White Sox game. Ron Santon was the biggest homer announcer of that time and it turned me off to the Cubs (Plus Harry Caray is overrated, fite me). The Braves were also a better team in the mid 90s, so it felt good rooting for a winner a kid.

I'm most interested to hear those who don't live in an area with any pro teams, like Ty, as I know he roots for Minnesota in the NFL and Golden State in the NBA. Also those who have a rooting interest in a team in another country, like American fans of European soccer or UK fans of American spots. I know certain guys, like Lee, root for the Toronto Bluejays because he saw a game in Toronto. Simple enough.

Me, I root for Everton in the EPL because when I was getting into soccer they had a prime Tim Howard and it was easy for me to root for them because one of their best players was American.
(I wish he would have played for a better team.)