Random thought

[pne]

I'd've thought that one of the points of having a local sports team (whether it be football, tennis, or whatever) is to show how well the locals can play that sport.

Trading players to other teams would seem to defeat that point; after all, what's the use of cheering for, say, your city's team if only one of the players is actually from that city? That would seem to defeat the purpose of team loyalty to me. You might be cheering one some of the same players that you were booing out last season, because they were on the rival city's team.

The immediate result would seem to be that the success of a team is determined less by how well people in a given city play the sport and/or how well they can train others, but by how much money the local team has to buy top athletes.

Comments

[asciident]

From an American professional sports teams perspective, the point isn't to show how well locals can play but rather to entertain the locals.

Also...

[asciident]

how much money the local team has to buy top athletes

This is a pretty big concern right now, because (just pulling one out) the Yankees are a very rich team and have won a lot of World Series(es?). Although as we saw last year, it doesn't guarantee a win. :)

[pne.livejournal.com]

OK, I can see that bit. Thanks for mentioning it.

I still don't get the "team loyalty" thing, though, where you'll cheer for $FavouriteTeam regardless of whether they play, since that name is merely a label for a random bunch of people who don't have any particular defining characteristics.

[asciident]

Well, I can't speak to all of it because I'm not a big sports fan and it's different here on the west coast (generally) than it is in the rest of the coast (generally).

Lots and lots of people migrate to the west coast, so you get a mix out here of people who are rooting for the local teams and their "home" teams from whereever they moved from. I'm under the impression that even though people move around they're much more diehard about their home teams.

As for why to root for a team, I think it's more a of a tradition -- your family liked this team so you root for them too -- and also liking the overall team: management, stadium, the show they put on, the players (especially long-term even if they aren't local). There is still a fair amount of jibing players who move around. I think Seattleites boo Alex Rodrigues who moved to the Yankees to get a championship.

[asciident]

Um, rest of the country, not the coast. :)

[papertygre.livejournal.com]

I also never understood the mentality of rooting for a local sports team, precisely because the players on that team have nothing necessarily to do with the local area itself.

Whether or not there is any connection to how much money the local team has, depends on the sport. I believe football (the American kind) has leagues that constitutionally limit the amount of money each team can spend on players' salaries, so that all teams cost the same amount -- proponents say this makes the sport more fair. Baseball, by contrast, doesn't limit that, so teams can and often have bought off players. (I should disclaim that this is from sketchy memory -- the person I learned this from isn't available right now to check if I still have it right.)

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

Isn't there the same problem about national sports teams? (Not sure if all members of a team have to belong to be citizens of the country they play for, but I suppose they don't.)

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

They do, generally.

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

What really mystifies me is that (at least for American football) there's a draft so that the worst teams get the best new players -- seemingly to totally even out the skill levels of the teams.