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Thursday, October 19, 2017 • WATERLOO CHRONICLE • 29Serving your community since 1856 I made a trip to Dallas a few weeks ago for a football fan's fantasy weekend (see previ-ous column) and was able to cheer -- qui- etly, that is -- for my favourite NFL team, the Los Angeles Rams, as they upset the favoured hometown squad. I say "quietly" because when you're sitting in a stadium surrounded by 100,000 rabid Cowboys fans, you quickly remind yourself of the phrase "discretion is the better part of valour." However, in the safety of my basement where my desktop computer resides, I am now quite will- ing to type as loudly as possible: MY RAMS BEAT THE COWBOYS. (Can you tell that I grew up despising "Ameri- ca's Team") Shortly after that excursion, someone asked me how/why the Los Angeles Rams of all teams became my favourite. A good question and one I was fully prepared to answer. The helmets. For those of you who follow the game, you know that the Rams helmets have stylized ram horns painted on them. So when I was young and first started watching the NFL, I saw them on television and thought those helmets were cooler than Napoleon Solo (Man From U.N.C.L.E.) and Michael Nesmith (The Monkees) put together. Cooler still was the name of their quarterback at the time -- Roman Gabriel. I mean, how many football teams do you know of, past or present, who have a quarterback named Roman? That was all it took for my pre-pubescent brain to pick a favourite team: cool helmets and a quar- terback with a cool first name. Sold. Done deal. And, except for a single Super Bowl victory when the team sojourned to St. Louis for a time, I've been punished for making that irrational deci- sion ever since. It is an interesting thing to reflect upon - why did your favourite team become your favourite team? Another example related to football is why Ohio State also became a fave of mine. Simple -- the uniforms of my high school team(s) at Eastwood Collegiate had the same colour scheme (red, grey, white) as the Buckeyes. It was even part of a chant at the end of our school song which we sang on a regular basis at sporting events and assemblies. "Red, grey, white. Red, grey, white. These are the colours for which we fight. Touchdowns, field goals. Whose are they? Eastwood Collegiate -- yay, yay, yay!" (I'm getting goosebumps as I sit here at my anti- quated work station) Added to that that my Rebel coaches/mentors Tom McKenzie and Don Archer were Buckeye fans who travelled to the high school coaches clinic put on by OSU in Columbus each spring and my fate was sealed. A fortunate fate as it turned out as the Buckeyes have brought me many more titles and victories than my still-beloved Rams. Proximity is obviously the biggest factor in play when people decide which team(s) to stake their future happiness and quality of life to. That's why here in K-W, you probably know more Blue Jays, Maple Leafs and Buffalo Bills fans than all other teams combined. I would hazard a guess that, similar to my fasci- nation with Rams' helmets, uniforms are a big part of why some favour a certain team. It would explain why there's more San Diego Chargers fans (great colour scheme and super-cool lightning bolt) in our hockey-mad country than there are Vancouver Canucks fans. Have you ever met an actual Canucks fan? I haven't. But Google "the history of Vancouver Canucks jerseys" and you'll immediately know why. I'm sure for some people their athletic alle- giance is connected to something experiential such as attending a game as a youngster or watching someone win a championship. Although not team-oriented, a single experi- ence explains why I became a big Tom Watson fan. Watson battled the legendary Jack Nicklaus mano a mano in a classic British Open at Turnberry in 1977 and my best buddy, the late Mark Fischer, and I watched in fascination. Tom Terrific and the Golden Bear were paired together the final two rounds and lapped the field leaving the next closest golfer a full ten strokes behind. Watson won by one stroke and became "my guy" from then on. Whatever the reason behind your choice of favourite team or athlete, one thing is certain: no one will ever have a cooler name than Roman Gabriel. ••• Brian Totzke is a freelance writer who also cheers for the Raptors (proximity), Canadiens (superiority) and The Little Engine That Could (tenacity). He is on Twitter: @kitwatguy. The reasons why we love our teams