Baseball was my first love and the Cubs are forever my #1 team but getting to go to Mariner games made me a fan of theirs but they are the only Seattle team I can stand ... the rest of them can all lose every game for all I care.
They're rivals of our local teams because of proximity to...our local teams. In situations in which we do not have a local team, the proximity is irrelevant. Do you only buy Apple products because Microsoft is Seattle-based? Do you adamantly avoid Kirkland-headquartered Costco? Do you refuse to take any flight that uses Boeing aircraft? If Portland and Seattle are direct rivals, regardless of context, why would anyone choose to support any of their businesses?
Because teams are directly tied to sense of place. Modern day warriors doing battle for their city states. They wear our city on their jerseys. Trying to tie that to where a corporate office is located is ridiculous. Come on man.
So you don't root for any teams outside of the state of Oregon? Somehow I had it in my head that you were a Niners fan. That wrong?
But nobody disputes a rivalry with Seattle. The Ducks biggest rival is Washington. The Timbers biggest rival are the Sounders. The Blazers biggest rival was the Sonics. Nobody would dispute that, no? And there has always been a rivalry between the two cities in terms of which is better to live in, blah blah blah. So of all the teams to root for, why one of the teams from our biggest rival?
This is like marrying the ugly sister of the dude who bullied you in high school. You have to see that fucker and his family at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter.
So it's OK to root for "Modern day warriors doing battle for their city state" that happens to not be your city-state, as long as none of the other modern day warriors doing battle for your city state have a rivalry with any other modern day warriors doing battle for that city state. We all have arbitrary lines--yours is no more or less reasonable than anyone else's.
Fuck the ducks, don't care about the timbers, the sonics don't exist. These are your rivalries, it isn't a universal thing. So yeah, I'd dispute that. That is how I have no trouble being a Mariner's fan.
Seems pretty logical to me. If you are brought up hating the teams of another city, how do separate out one team from another? It's the same douchey fans up there supporting all the same teams. I don't like Laker fans and I don't like the city of LA so you don't see me supporting any teams from LA. If you owned a store, and your rival store carried something that you didn't have, would you buy that thing from that store? Fuck no. You'd go find another store that you're not rivals with to buy that product.
because some of us dont hold a universal rivalry. Some of us can base it off of the individual sport and teams involved in that given sport.