Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Am I a Bandwagoner??

As i was walking Lucy, i started thinking about the Sounders game this weekend. ever since i learned that the Sounders were becoming a MLS team, i have been hooked. my buddy Kovac and i decided to buy season tickets and haven't looked back since.

This weekend the Sounders played down in Colorado and i was actually a bit bummed that i wasn't going to be able to watch, let alone possibly listen to the game as i was camping at baker lake with molly and some friends. as game time approached, molly reminded me that it was game time. without hesitation, i jumped out of my camping chair, walked to the truck and turned on the radio. to my delight, the game came in on the radio. i went back to the fire, grabbed my chair, some beers and set up camp in the back of my truck with the game blasting out the back sliding window. i was in heaven. i haven't missed a game this season, whether it be actually going to the game, watching it on tv, or (as of this weekend) listen to it on the radio.

on my walk with Lucy i started to wonder, did i jump on the bandwagon? what made me start to think this was that there was a Sounders team before the Sounders FC. they were a USL team. what i am getting at is that i had never watched the USL Sounders other than when they might have been on the Fox Soccer Channel. of course i was a fan, but i didn't know who was on the team. i new that they were good, they won 3 USL Championships in the last 8 years.

as a Sounders fan though, there is always someone that can trump me. lets just say that 10 years down the road, the Sounders win a few MLS championships and all the sudden they become the Yankees of the MLS, i will be able to say that i was a season ticket holder from the beginning. however, i can be easily trumped by someone that said they were season ticket holders for the USL Sounders. i bet there are people out there that have followed them from the conception of the Sounders in 1977 in the days of the NASL.

the difference is this, the Oklahoma City Thunder fans didn't have to be Sonic fans because they were in Seattle. if you are a fan now, you didn't jump on the bandwagon of the Thunder because there was no Thunder. in the same respect if the MLS Sounders decided to be something other then the Sounders FC, let's say they were called Seattle FC, you couldn't be a band wagoner because there was no Seattle FC. my guess is that regardless of the name, there wouldn't be a USL Sounders. they would be squished out by "Seattle FC."

if the name is the only difference, other than the fact there was no MLS team in Seattle, then i am going with.........no, i am not a bandwagoner. however, i will always tip my hat and give reverence to those who were true fans of the USL Sounders, as they should for the NASL Sounders. maybe if the Tacoma Raineer's become a professional baseball team, i can say "i used to go to games of theirs when the were the Tacoma Tigers, and i saw Jose Canseco play for them." that would be sweet.

2 comments:

Jessika said...

You are so cute...pulling up a chair to your truck whilst camping so you can listen to the game...
I think you are ok, not a bandwagoner. I have a feeling you have wanted to beable to support a home football team for awhile, but there wasnt any reason to. I might call you a bandwagoner if you never liked football before and then all of a sudden you did. But because you have been doing football for over 25 years, I think you are ok.

Mr. S said...

that is true. i remember when they were trying to get the funding for qwest field, they said that it will be intended for soccer as well as the seahawks. i remember being excited. i didn't know if it would actually happen, but i was hopeful.