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I asked all of you on Twitter to come up with "measured hot takes" with "logic and thought" behind them — and allow me to either agree or disagree. Here's a good one to think about:
Within that mostly humorous sentiment is a notion that plenty of you have probably wrestled with over the years (and particularly after Vikings kickers miss wide left in the playoffs).
Is it "worth it" to be a Minnesota sports fan — and, if we can take it a step further: If you could start all over again and root for any set of teams, would you want to switch allegiances?
The question reveals just how much the teams we root for are determined by forces other than conscious decision-making. If you're a Minnesota sports fan who grew up here and still lives here, there's a very good chance that simple geography and familiarity made you a Minnesota fan.
For instance: I grew up in Grand Forks, N.D., right on the Minnesota border. A lot of people in my hometown cheer for Minnesota pro teams because they are in most cases the closest to Grand Forks. The local affiliate would get Vikings games. Fox Sports North is part of a lot of cable packages.
But I also grew up a huge Atlanta baseball fan because they were always on cable (TBS). It wasn't until I moved to Minneapolis for college in the mid-1990s that I became interested in any Minnesota team other than the Vikings.
If you're a Minnesota fan who doesn't live in Minnesota, there's a good chance that you either used to live here or you had a close relative who rooted for Minnesota teams, influencing your fandom from an early age.
But what if, when we were young, we were stripped of all those connections and given a blank slate to go choose whatever team(s) seemed the best or most interesting? I mean, technically we do have that choice but it is infrequently exercised.
If you could go back to your youth, would you still want to make a conscious decision to root for Minnesota teams?
I asked Brittany that follow-up question after her tweet. She wrote: "I've tried the Dodgers when I lived in LA and consider myself a WI badger fan cuz plenty of friends went there but, no. Not really. When MN wins something, anything I want to be there. If not physically then enthusiastically. Its a sickness! Or love? I can't tell anymore."
She hints at a key element: While it certainly isn't always easy to root for Minnesota teams because of their proclivity toward heartbreak, it's hard to imagine just switching alliances.
The moments when local teams win big — like, say, the Lynx delivering FOUR championships last decade, the Minneapolis Miracle or the Twins' two World Series titles — are shared community events and memories that we would miss out on if we just picked random teams thousands of miles away.
Sure, it would have been more rewarding in some ways to have rooted for, say, Boston-area pro teams in the last two decades. But a fear of missing what might happen next in Minnesota sports is a powerful driving force when combined with geography and personal history.
So go ahead and tell someone who loves Minnesota sports that it just isn't worth it. They probably believe it to a degree. And they probably aren't going to change.
