> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thealgorithmicjournal.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Teams We Inherit - URL: https://www.thealgorithmicjournal.com/the-teams-we-inherit/ - Published: 2026-09-01T15:38:49.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-01T15:45:42.000Z - Description: Nobody sat me down when I was a kid and asked which football team I wanted to spend the rest of my life worrying about. - Author: David Showers - Tags: Sports, Marc Reynolds **By Marc Reynolds | Beyond the Score** There was no application. No comparison chart. Nobody explained the long-term emotional consequences. I simply became a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. That's how it happens for a lot of us. We inherit sports teams the way we inherit family recipes, holiday traditions, and stories about relatives we never met. Before we're old enough to understand standings or salary caps, somebody puts a hat on our head, teaches us which colors we're supposed to wear, and tells us which team we absolutely do not root for. And somehow, it sticks. ## It Usually Starts With Someone Ask a lifelong sports fan why they love their team and eventually you'll hear about a person. “My dad took me to my first game.” “My grandfather never missed a Sunday.” “My mom was the biggest Cubs fan you ever met.” “My older brother taught me all the players.” That's the part of sports that gets lost when we reduce everything to scores, contracts, statistics and championships. Sports are often really about **people**. You remember sitting beside your father on the couch more clearly than you remember the final score. You remember your grandfather yelling at the television. You remember the first jersey somebody bought you. Years later, the people in those memories may be gone. But the team is still playing. And suddenly watching a game isn't just watching a game. It's visiting them for a little while. ## Geography Used to Decide Everything There was also a time when your ZIP code pretty much determined your allegiance. If you grew up in Pittsburgh, you probably didn't spend your childhood debating whether to become a Steelers fan. In Chicago, families were divided into Cubs and White Sox households before the kids understood why. Entire regions organized fall weekends around college football teams. Today, a kid in Ohio can watch every Golden State Warriors game. A teenager in Florida can become obsessed with Manchester City. Highlights arrive instantly, fantasy sports make individual players more important, and social media lets fans build communities thousands of miles from the team's stadium. That's not necessarily bad. But something about inherited fandom is different. You aren't choosing the team because they're good. You're choosing them because **they're yours**. Or, more accurately, somebody decided they were yours before you had much say in the matter. Which explains why millions of perfectly rational adults continue supporting teams that have provided them with decades of evidence that this may not be a healthy relationship. Sports loyalty is strange that way. ## Winning Isn't Really the Point Every fan wants championships. Of course we do. But if winning were the only reason we watched sports, most fan bases would have disappeared decades ago. Instead, people fill stadiums for teams that haven't won championships in generations. They buy jerseys after losing seasons. They organize their weekends around games they're fairly certain will end badly. Then they come back the following week. Why? Because fandom isn't a transaction. It's belonging. A championship is wonderful, but the real experience happens during all those ordinary seasons in between—the hopeful Septembers, miserable Novembers, improbable comebacks, terrible draft picks, questionable coaching decisions and annual declarations that *next year will be different*. And sometimes next year actually is different. That's what keeps us coming back. Hope may be the most renewable resource in sports. ## Then We Hand It Down Eventually, something funny happens. The kid who inherited the team becomes the adult doing the handing down. We buy our children tiny jerseys. We take them to games. We teach them the chants. We explain rivalries that began decades before they were born. And if we're fortunate, one day they start caring without us having to encourage it. That's when you realize something bigger has happened. The team has become part of the family's language. Maybe someday your child will tell someone about sitting beside you during a playoff game. They won't remember every play. They probably won't remember the score. But they'll remember **you**. That's the real inheritance. ## More Than the Score Sports occupy a peculiar place in our lives. They don't determine whether we can pay the mortgage. They don't solve our problems. The outcome of Sunday's game usually changes absolutely nothing about Monday morning. And yet they matter. They give families something to gather around. They connect generations that sometimes have very little else in common. They create rituals, memories and stories that can last much longer than the athletes who created them. Maybe that's why abandoning your childhood team feels almost impossible. You're not just changing the logo on your hat. You're walking away from a piece of your own history. So I'll keep watching the Steelers. I'll complain when they lose, become irrationally optimistic when they win, question decisions made by people infinitely more qualified than I am, and convince myself every August that something special might be coming. Because somewhere along the way, they stopped being a football team I watched. They became **my team**. I didn't choose them. I inherited them. And someday, if we're lucky, the teams we inherit become part of what we leave behind. [ ![Marc Reynolds, AI-created Sports Writer for The Algorithmic Journal](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ae/00/ae00f758-acc4-44aa-a793-8f45aa1cca12/content/images/2026/08/06_Marc_Reynolds_Sports.png) ](https://www.thealgorithmicjournal.com/tag/marc-reynolds/) ### [Marcus "Marc" Reynolds](https://www.thealgorithmicjournal.com/tag/marc-reynolds/) Sports Writer · The Algorithmic Journal Beyond the Score Marcus "Marc" Reynolds is an **AI-created Sports Writer for *The Algorithmic Journal***, developed specifically to explore the people, traditions and emotions that make sports matter far beyond the final score. His column, *Beyond the Score*, looks past statistics and standings to examine fandom, competition, identity, community and the stories that connect generations of sports fans. Marc's work is created with artificial intelligence under human editorial direction and review, reflecting TAJ's commitment to transparency and its philosophy: *Artificial intelligence. Human perspective.* [Read all articles by Marc Reynolds → ](https://www.thealgorithmicjournal.com/tag/marc-reynolds/)