I grew up watching the Saints. I was more interested in baseball as a little kid but enjoyed playing football. For some reason I was a Notre Dame fan (yes before Rudy came out), even after I found out that very few of the players were actually Irish when I was 5. The Saints were so black back then that when my Dad told me he was there to see Tom Dempsey's record setting field goal kick, I was thinking of a black guy.
Then I saw the Bucs play, and became a fan. I wanted to play defense like John Lynch and run the ball like Mike Alstott. I mean I liked Criag "IronHead" Heyward (bruising runner) before that when I was even younger but I dunno, it was different with Alstott. I failed to notice how great Alstott's footwork was (its a common "joke" when talking about Alstott among NFL Network and even the people going through the highlights back in the day about how he had no moves, rumblin, bumblin, stumblin) being that I didn't get to watch every single Bucs game since it really wasn't easy back then to watch teams outside of your area, and took unnecessary punishment at times but it was fun. I liked defense more before I realized how much punishment you could deliver running and blocking, and I think that's a problem with many of our players when they get put in a blocking role, I liked to block. Tom Rathman said the same thing. I think its also a problem when getting moved to linebacker. I liked playing defense. I thought runners who liked to be flashy and go out of bounds instead of getting hit were wusses.
Now I watch the Saints occasionally with my Dad, and they are fun to watch, Drew Brees is really a great qb. Of course it was funner when they had the snow patrol.
As far as college I really got into LSU when Hester was running the ball, and that's when I did a search and found this site. Growing up I went to more Tulane games.
I enjoyed watching the Patriots the past few years, it seems like its not going to be as fun this year, but the year I really sat and made sure to tune into every game was the year Hillis was with the Browns, so much that I became delusional that they he would get another chance after they really ruined his career, the Cleveland media said so many bad things about the guy. I even traded away Jamaal Charles FOR Hillis! stupid move. Hopefuly some team picks him up and he can at least be a short yardage/ 3rd down/goal line back. I guess the team I am going to watch the most this year is the Broncos. I try to watch a god deal of teams though, the all 22 film now, even the blacker ones, just to gauge how good the players really are. I want to be knowledgeable when discussing all players with dwfs. Its shorter, no commentary, just the view of the entire field from two different angles and sometimes the shortcuts of games which is like 30 minutes. Wish there was the same thing offered for college. I usually just watch it afterwards and fast forward though. It usually takes me some of the spring and most of summer to catch up with what I want though, since I don't have that much time during the actual season.
It seems like a good deal of friends I had growing up like particular teams because of playing video games with that team. I have an old friend who likes the Eagles beause he used them on Tecmo Bowl back in the day, and basically threw the hail mary all the time and it worked quite a bit. I imagine Madden has a similar effect with players and how they are rated. Even our fast guys don't have a high speed rating. I think if you switch a White safety to cornerback it says he lacks awareness which doesn't make any sense. I'm not too big into video games so I dunno how much this affects things.
