Looking to the Griz to brighten my fall

I was the first person to fight the idea that summer was ending when the rainy and cold days started to outnumber the sunny ones. I love summer, and winter too, but I just struggle to find a reason to appreciate the shoulder seasons. I am a firm believer that if it is not hot out, it should be snowing.

I respect the fact that something has to lead us into and out of the good seasons, but as a non-hunter the only thing that I like about fall is football, which I actually prefer to be played in the sun or snow as well, but either way I'm a big fan. This has been a tough fall for me, though. My NFL team is the Seattle Seahawks and my college team is the University of Washington Huskies. So actually I should say that it has been beyond a tough fall, but I don't think that there is an adjective that describes your favorite professional team going from a lengthy streak of NFC West Championships to watching them get blown out on national television while you eat Thanksgiving dinner.

The only true bright spot in my fall-football scenario is the Montana Grizzlies. I feel a little guilty, because I have always been frustrated with bandwagon fans, and I am unsure if that is what I have become. I was lucky enough to get to go to the homecoming game and the Northern Arizona game, and I went down to tailgate with some friends for the Griz-Bobcat game. Prior to my first Griz game I bought myself a maroon UM shirt so that I could look like I was cheering for the appropriate team. But while I looked around the stadium at all the "true" fans, I found myself feeling like an outsider.

I lived in Montana for four years when I was a teenager, but other than that I've pretty much always lived in Western Washington. So I was raised as a Husky, Seahawk, Mariner, Sonic, etc. fan. Even when my family lived here we were still Seattle sports fans, and seldom watched any UM games. While I wasn't living here I did not seek out Griz games on television, but if I happened to see the score I always checked to see how they did.

Now almost a decade later I find myself excited by the news that the Griz are in the playoffs, and even better that my friend has an extra ticket with my name on it for the next game. But when I go to the stadium on Saturday and surround myself with fans that have watched them play through the good times and the bad, I wonder if I should feel guilty. I know little about the players or the history of the team, unlike "my" teams, but there I will sit reaping the benefits of a successful team. It seems sort of like going to a party hosted by someone that you just met when everyone else has known the person for years.

I guess I should remind myself that I just moved back here and am really getting a second chance to be a Griz fan. Perhaps I deserve to be a fan of a winning team since I watch and cringe weekly for my Seattle teams. But I shamefully have to admit that I probably wouldn't be so eager to be a Griz fan if they were having a losing season.

Conversely, I watched every home game of my new high school team, Bigfork, despite their winless season. Sure it was a requirement of my job, but I was rooting for them to score, and hopefully even win, even though it was against any sort of unbiased journalism ethics. Even when Bigfork played Polson, where I attended school and was a member of the cheerleading squad, I still was hoping Bigfork would do well. I guess if I was a bandwagon type of person, than I would've been rooting for my alma mater, which ended up with the best record in the conference, rather than Bigfork, who came in last.

So I guess I have some soul searching to do this week. There really is no official rule about picking up new teams when you are a fan. I think I'll just have to decide for myself if I am being a hypocrite for all the times I grumbled about people being at Seahawks' games that were not "real" fans, or if I am just lucky that my new college team is successful. Perhaps it just means that now I'm committed to staying a fan of the Griz no matter how they do in the seasons to come. And either way, I have always been a football fan, and I see nothing wrong with supporting the teams closest to where you live.