I follow teams more these days based on how they operate as a business rather than any regional loyalty I had similar to my days growing up in Northeast Ohio.
Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NFL have created a product where – as Jerry Seinfeld said in his standup bits in the 1990s – “we’re rooting for laundry.”
I can drop interest in just about any college or sports team if there is a major change in key players, coaches, and ownership.
In fact, my favorite NFL teams change as quickly as any particular team’s owner-general manager-coach-quarterback quartet of competence changes.
I enjoy when my native NBA franchise, the Cleveland Cavaliers, experiences success – for example – but my favorite team to watch this season was the Boston Celtics. The Celtics were a team I hated while growing up although their transition offense in the early and mid-1970s was a thing of beauty to watch prior to the ABA-NBA merger.
That hate doesn’t matter anymore. My family and friends in the Cleveland area furrow their collective brow at me, but some have realized I’m not going back to regional or native loyalty and will ask out of intrigue who I’m rooting for “this year.”
Pro sports teams are products with frequently adjusted interchangeable parts, and the NFL in particular overtly operates and promotes its product as a television show. The sports world’s top TV ratings are testimony to Shield’s business savvy for using this model.
I love hearing some curmudgeonly remark from people molded right out of central casting who say, “I don’t watch the NFL anymore.”
Around here you might hear that said more than it is said among the rest of the country, but the TV ratings, the merchandise revenue, and the billions of dollars networks are bidding to have the best reality TV show ever prove there aren’t enough haters out there to shift the landscape.
Boston’s NBA squad, if kept together for five or six seasons, could win at least four more titles. However, franchise ownership will have to determine how many of those players’ salaries nudging the team into the NBA’s second apron will be worth keeping based on return on the additional luxury tax outlays.
It will only be a matter of time before I grow tired of the Celtics. I’ll see how the mix of NBA drafts and free agent signings will affect what NBA franchises I either add to or prune from my NBA viewing tree.
If the latest NBA TV deal ends the run TNT’s Inside the NBA has had since 1989, I might even change how I view NBA postgame panel shows.
As an athlete, no matter how much money a franchise pays you, if you’re cut to avoid hitting a salary cap, to elude payment of the aforementioned roster bonus, or you’re released to stay under a hard salary cap, can you blame these athletes for being so fluid in their willingness to change employers to stay ahead of these types of decisions made beyond their control?
There are regionally loyal fans, and there are loyal fans of one or more athletes depending on where those athletes move. I no longer have a favorite team aside from The Ohio State Buckeyes at college or pro levels.
Do I get excited when one of my native Cleveland teams makes a postseason run? Of course I do, but it’s not going to ruin my sports calendar year.
My interest, due to the current climate of pro sports, moves from team to team based on these factors:
How well is the team managed? In the NFL for example, has the aforementioned quartet of competence owner-general manager-quarterback trio changed for the worse? If so, my intertest is lost.
Are some of the players and coaches I watch – whether one particular sport is perceived as more collaborative than another – moving to different franchises?
This ease in moving from team to team is now at the college level with the transfer portal fueled further by payments a university can make to its players as well as name, image, likeness earnings.
It will be interesting to see how many people still prefer college sports over pro sports because they feel there is a lack of loyalty in the professional levels.
I’m not hung up on loyalty because the major players among sports of interest aren’t’ hung up on it either.
Who are we – the working stiffs of the world - to judge these athletes and coaches on their loyalty anyway? It’s a double standard we hold for pro athletes versus the labor force.
Do we change employers for better pay and benefits?
Do we change employers because another employer offers a promotion we couldn’t earn at our existing employer?
Do we change employers based on their viability as a going concern?
Do we change employers – voluntarily or involuntarily – when ownership has changed?
It seems loyalty has a strong negative correlation to options in sports and business, doesn’t it?

I’ve recently reached 29 ½ years in the private sector following 10 years in the United States Air Force. My post military career is comprised of 10 companies. I served 22 years, 7 months among four of those outfits, and 6 years, 11 months among the other six employers.
My longest tenures among employers in my private sector career are 10 ½ years, 5 years and one month, and two positions where I served 3 ½ years.
Among those other six positions covering just a month shy of seven years, I bailed for assorted reasons. I’m not afraid to make a change if a choice is no longer a viable and bearable choice for me.
I’m also not one to stick around hoping I would get a “gravy train” severance from the closure of a company I could see lurching toward its inevitable closure.
I’ve responded proactively to harbingers of a continually failed or eventually shut down business among three of those six entities and exited after five months at another when a relocation to Indianapolis almost shifted gears to a relocation to Greenville, South Carolina.
Relocate to the Deep South? I was just getting used to Indy.
Goodbye!
I’ve also left organizations when a strategic move was – since I’ve been in management for most of my private sector years – something I could not lie to myself and tow the company line with a brave face after coming out of the conference room.
I experienced ambivalent feelings leaving two or three of all those former employers. Otherwise, I was able to move on seamlessly with little or no sentiment.
I was only let go among all these decades once. I left in a gentlemanly manner, showed the affected people around me how I did stuff, had three going away lunches among the remaining 51 calendar days I was still there (pretty generous transitional timeline, eh?). I felt like I was set free instead.
It’s the only time I left one job on a Friday and didn’t start the other job that following Monday. Two ensuing exits later, I never placed another tchotchke on any future desk I used. Aside from my distinct personality during casual and business interactions there isn’t much to learn about me on the desk nor on the walls.
These days If you need grooming items, over the counter meds, Nespresso bullets, or Tide stain stick from my desk drawer, on the other hand, I am your man.
I guess in a job interview if I told someone viewing my resume that loyalty was one of my strongest characteristics, I’d have to finish that answer with, “Self-awareness is one of my weakest.”