How's My Fanhood?

Remember that recent ESPN Mobile campaign where one user seemed to question his friend's fanhood?

Well, a good friend and fellow Ohioan seemed to do that to me on the phone the other night, and a healthy debate ensued. I told him this was going on the blog, but I'll be polite and not drop his name.

Sure I'm one of the more sensitive dudes I know, and some friends are thick enough to think that's a bad quality. But one thing I don't do is get emotional over my squads. Consider this lineup before you wonder if I've endured some heartache:

+ Cleveland Indians (1997 debacle against the Marlins)
+ Cleveland Browns ("The Pass" and "The Fumble")
+ Cleveland Cavaliers (Some guy named Jordan)
+ Cincinnati Bearcats (Kenyon Martin breaks his leg in 2000)
+ Ohio State Buckeyes (losers of the last two national championship games)

So yeah, those are my teams. And my boy seems to think that not taking bat to chair, matches to couch or forehead to brick wall means I'm not down.

I told him I could probably recall all the starting quarterbacks and running backs at Ohio State the last 20 or 25 years. His reply was sensible, that just being knowledgeable, a student of the sport and team, isn't enough to make me a die-hard fan.

As a former sportswriter, I've covered many games, coaches, teams and players, but only was lucky enough to interview John Cooper for a season preview once in the 1990s. Ohio State football would be a dream job for a beat writer.

But my friend continued by saying that growing up in smaller, rural towns in central Ohio as he and some others in our circle did offered only OSU football as their childhood athletics outlet. Having grown up in the gigantic metropolis known as Cleveland, I had those other teams to distract me from OSU football. So he and the others are hard-core and I am not, by his logic.

"You had a lot of other options when you were growing up that they might have watered down your interest in each. Did watching any of those Cleveland teams lose make you cry?"

No, they didn't, because it's dumb to get emotional over games, especially since they're played by people I've never met. "Watching Ohio State lose has made me cry three times," he said.

Don't get me wrong; I took the sports I played pretty seriously in high school and there is sports in my family's history. But I think being even-keeled as you support the local team is OK if you still want to call yourself die-hard.

That's why I can be proud that my Indians took the best team in baseball to seven games in the ALCS last fall before bowing to the eventual World Series-winning Boston Red Sox. I'm not the typical hater to call talk radio, for example, and blast my squad because "they suck." You know what? The Tribe was supposed to merely contend for a postseason spot, not beat the best team in the sport.

And that's why I can be proud to have watched my Cavaliers hang within one point of the Celtics, with two minutes left in Game 7 of their series two weeks ago, on Boston's home floor, before losing.

And that's why I can handle OSU's having lost the national championship game because after that embarrassing loss to Florida the year before, everyone had their sights set on 2008, not 2007. So this is the year for Buckeye football, and it begins in less than 100 days. Expect me to be there when OSU plays at USC in September.

And expect me to watch every game with Steve and Bruce and the gang up here at our favorite bar.

Just don't expect me to get emotional if they don't win the national championship. I see my friend's point; I really do. But to me, it's just games, fellas. I don't really cry about much else, so why would I cry about college football?