How do you decide who your favorite team is?
Does a bad loss hurt more than a great win feels?
I was hanging with some friends recently, and we were trying to rank our favorite teams - a difficult task for many. If you root for a bunch of different teams in different sports, how do you choose?
My immediate thought was, “Well, what team winning their league title would make me happiest?”
But that’s not really fair - because in my specific situation, the Giants have won the World Series three times in the last 12 years (albeit not since 2014), and the Warriors have won four titles recently. The 49ers haven’t won in 28 years, so sure that’s an easy answer but…is it a fair metric?
I grew up watching the 49ers win - I moved to the Bay Area as a kid in 1981, the first year they won their Cinderella Super Bowl - so the buildup never happened. The Warriors were so moribund and hopeless that their first title was super exciting, but basketball has always been a third sport for me (though maybe not anymore). When the Giants won in 2010, that was about as good as it has gotten for me (as evidenced by the joy I had in 2012 and 2014 which was high but not nearly the same thing).
But when I think about the emotional rollercoaster the Giants have had me on…was the high of 2010 higher than the low of Game 6 in 2002? … Man, it’s close.
The 49ers losing the Superbowl against the Ravens and Chiefs were BRUTAL. When - not if - they win another ring, it will be GLORIOUS because it’s been so long. But that’s almost as much because of the pain of the losses and the failures since 1994.
If you asked me what the greatest 49ers wins are of my lifetime, there are of course the Super Bowls - but after that, I can really only think of a few - playoff wins with The Catch II (Terrell Owens) and The Catch III (Vernon Davis), and I’d add in Colin Kaepernick running rampant over the Packers in the playoffs as well. (By the way, I remembered this as a game in the snow … until I realized it was because I watched it from Lake Tahoe where it was, in fact, snowing. Memory is super weird.)
Think about how many other games I’ve watched and how those are really it.
But you ask me about painful defeats? How about Kyle Williams TWO fumbles, losing to the Seahawks in Seattle in the NFCC, losing to the Falcons in 1999 with a brutal injury to Garrison Hearst and what turned out to be Steve Young’s last game ever, Leonard Marshall breaking Joe Montana like a rag doll … I mean, those all IMMEDIATELY came to mind and that’s not remotely comprehensive. That’s what it’s like to be a fan. And that’s not great, is it?
To answer the question personally, I have no such debate, the 49ers are and always have been my favorite team, and the NFL my favorite sport. But it seems to me that the evidence is as much about how painful key losses are than the wonder of a win.
Being a sports fan is tough sledding.