A lot of
people have asked me over the years how I became a Colts fan. I mean, what
seems to baffle a lot of people is there is no obvious path to cheering for the
Indianapolis Colts. . . I’m originally from West Virginia, not Maryland or
Indiana . . . my husband, Mike, is a Cowboys’ fan, and so’s my brother-in-law,
PJ . . . my Dad’s a basketball fan . . . no female, blood relative is even a
football fan. So, why the Colts?
To be
perfectly honest, it’s all the fault of the Pittsburgh Steelers. All right, all
right . . . that’s not entirely true, but it makes a good storyline.
Here’s how it all came about . . .
I grew up
most of my life in West Virginia. My family didn’t watch a lot of football, but
the better the WVU Mountaineers were, the more we watched. You know how it is,
the home-team halo effect. Anyway, by the time I hit my junior year in high
school, they were really smokin’ and were finally poised to beat Penn State. If
you’ve ever been a WVU fan, then you know what it means to be BEAT – BEAT –
PENN STATE!
OK, so the
Mount’neers won. Sadly, I don’t remember many of the details of the game.
Sometimes, I think there might be something about the Y chromosome that makes
guys remember every detail. But, then sometimes I think the real problem was
that I really didn’t understand the game. I enjoyed watching it because of the
action, and that is still my number one attraction to the game.
Anyway, I
moved out of the house shortly thereafter and then to Delaware. I didn’t know
it at the time, but this would begin a five-year hiatus in my journey to
becoming a football fan and more importantly to becoming a Colts’ fan. Not that
I didn’t catch any games, but Mike isn’t a big fan, and I wasn’t all that
attached to it at the time. We usually watched the Super Bowl, and if we went
over to PJ’s during the season, we watched the Cowboys, or sometimes a college
game. Then, along about 1992 something happened, and I am not really sure what.
Mike always says it’s like a light went on in my head.
Mike and I
had gotten into the habit of going down to the East End Café on Main St. I’ve
never been really clear on the whole “café” part, the East End is a bar. But,
not a bad one. Anyway, we’d go down on Saturdays for lunch and to drink a
couple beers. When they moved in a pinball machine, World Cup Soccer, we
started staying longer. Gary, the owner/manager, always had college football on
during the season. There were two TVs, one over the back end of the bar where
Gary and most of the other patrons would stay, and the other one was at the
other end, hanging over the pinball machine. Kind of hard to miss.
So, we
spent most of the 1992 season college football season, in the East End, playing
pinball and watching the game while we switched off playing. One Saturday, when
we got home, I asked if he minded if I turned on the TV to catch the end of the
game. I don’t even remember which teams were playing, but we’d been at the East
End for several hours and I was invested in the outcome, I wanted to know who
won. Little did Mike know that turning on our TV that day would consign him to
an endless number of weekends watching football. Poor Mike!
I’m
serious, poor Mike! It’s so ironic. Most guys would love to spend their
weekends watching football. But, Mike has only been marginally interested in
football his whole life. So, watching it every weekend for 20 weeks a year is
kind of annoying to him. He handles it well. I think the beer helps!
OK, so I was watching
football, started with mostly college, but more and more pro as time went on.
And, I quickly I came to the realization that you have to have a team to cheer
for. After all, it is a contest, and you need to care about the outcome, otherwise
why bother? So, I set about picking my team. That sounds so odd to people who
have watched a particular sport since infancy . . . but for me, coming so late
to the table, it was a necessary step. Look, football is all about passion and
desire. You can’t participate as a fan, unless you can feel that passion and
desire. Otherwise, it’s just a lesson in mechanics—no fun at all. You might as
well watch table tennis!
College was
simple, WVU. I also love watching the Michigan Wolverines. I needed a backup,
because WVU was really struggling, and they are hard to watch locally anyway
because it’s all Ohio State here. I can’t stand Ohio State by the way. Being
from West Virginia cheering for the Buckeyes is anathema, it’s in the blood.
Picking a pro team was much more difficult.
Being born
in Texas, PJ and Mike are Cowboys’ fan. And, I did consider cheering for the
Dallas for that reason. But there were a couple reasons I didn’t. First of all,
I’m my own woman. I didn’t want to be seen as just cheering for “my husband’s”
team. Look being a female watching football can be difficult enough, without
being seen as blindly following instead of making your own decisions. Secondly,
picking Dallas to cheer for in the 90’s was difficult. They were “America’s
Team” and were winning Super Bowls. You’d be declared a bandwagon hopper, and
the bullshit would be unending.
Then, I
considered cheering for the Eagles. They’re local after all, so seeing their
games is not a problem. And, they were kind of struggling then. The only
problem was that they were the sworn enemies of the Cowboys and some of their
fans are real jackasses. I’m serious, not all the fans, but a fair number of
them. Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are . . . OK, just kidding.
But, I do know a number of Eagles fans who are not jerks. In fact they are
football fans in the true since of the word “fan.” They follow their team
whether they’re winning or losing, but they’re not apologists or anything. They
just don’t feel the urge to sneer at their team. The only problem is the
Eagles’ fans who are jerks, seem to get the greatest pleasure from being
miserable assholes to all other football fans as well as their own team. I
don’t get it.
Anyway, so
there I was, needing to come up with a team, and the two most “logical” options
were unavailable to me. This all led directly to the Colts. They were always
the underdogs. Just the kind of team I had been looking for. I had started
watching the Colts late in 1994. And when the 1995 season rolled around, the Colts—with
the Come Back Kid at the helm, Jim Harbaugh—went 9-7 and made it into the
playoffs. We held our own there, and went all the way to the AFC Championship
game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. We lost on an illegal touchdown reception
caught by Kordell Stewart, after he ran out of bounds, then back in, and was
the first player to touch the football. This unfair loss, made me the rabid
Colts fan I am today. See? I told you it was all the Steelers fault . . .