I'm telling you, the "devout" team fan is a dinosaur now. Kids don't live and die with teams like we did. They root for players, not teams. They play video games, and they pick the teams with the best players, then follow those players in real life, too.
Kids live in an Instagram/Snapchat/Tiktok bubble, where everybody is a celebrity and individualism rules all.
That's why today's pros barely acknowledge or listen to their head coaches anymore. Their lives revolve around their brand on social media, and they coagulate together in small groups designed to better each other's brand. Coaches are background noise.
NBA timeouts crack me up now. There's a coach sitting there spouting generic instructions with a team that is barely facing him, let alone looking at him. Teams with superstars are run entirely by their superstars. The coach is just fodder.
lol, this thread is literally about Murray being a Viking fan rather than a Cowboy fan. It's not about Murray being a fan of a particular player on another team, it's literally about him choosing a different
team to follow. That's the entire context of this thread, and was the context of my comments within this thread. Clearly Kyler Murray did find a team to latch onto.
But to address your comments, first, I already agreed that kids today are less likely to become devout fans of a particular team, I just don't agree that it doesn't still happen frequently. Clearly it did with Murray ---- again, the topic of this thread --- and I know a lot of kids inMurray's age group, mine included that it happened with as well.
That's not to say kids don't attach to players. My oldest is a huge JJ Watt fan - probably his favorite player. But he is still a dyed in the wool Cowboy fan. Most of his friends were as well.
Go to any professional sporting event. There are boatloads of excited kids wearing merchandise from that team. Of course they are fans of that team. The Cowboys aren't selling out every game and selling boatloads of hats and trinkets and pennants to Brady fans or Aaron Rodgers fans, they are selling them to Cowboy fans, many of whom are Kyler Murray's age and younger.
And think about it - why do kids latch onto a player? It's not just random. It's largely because that player gets a lot of media attention, and they get a lot of exposure to that player in today's world, where there is access to so many media sources. Well, the same thing applies to teams. Kids are still exposed much more to local teams than to teams in other areas, so while that doesn't guarantee a kid will become a fan of the local team, it does create an influence that steers many kids to the local team.
In short, the fact that kids can more easily latch onto a player because of all the hype and publicity today does not prohibit them from developing a loyalty to a particular team. Professional sports would be all but dead if that were the case.
