Survey of Fan Loyalties: Are You a Displaced Fan?

[SC Skins Fan]

Originally Posted by Angry

I fell under the "Military category" for a long time. As far as the large population of Skins fans in the DC Area, I have 2 theories.

The first is that there are some children out there that hated their father so much that they chose to root for the Dallas Cowboys instead of the Washington Redskins.

The second is the fact that a redskins owner many years ago stated that the Washington redskins will never be integrated. This comment sparked rage in many DC area natives durring the time. In turn all of those DC area natives decided to root for the biggest rival of the Redskins instead. (BTW, it was the same owner of the Redskins that opposed an expansion team in Dallas)

The crazy thing is that now if you ask one of the decendants of a DC, native, Cowboys fan "Why do they like the Cowboys?" They cannot even tell you the answer. Pathetic, its all in the past, get over it.

Readers Point to Race as Reason for Cowboys Fans in Redskins Land - The Fifth Down Blog - NYTimes.com

I think it seems a compelling argument, but based upon personal observation I would tend to say that it does not and cannot explain the vast majority of Cowboys fans in the region. If it were a story about integration than you would expect that the majority of Cowboys fans would be African American, white 1960s era liberals/Civil Rights veterans, or descendants of those groups. That is not my experience. Race may represent a partial explanation, but I suspect that a larger portion is much simpler.

Between 1966 and 1985 the Cowboys won 12 division titles and 2 Super Bowls. They also won 7 Conference championships over that span. Like other teams that were great in the 1970's (Steelers, Raiders) they developed a large national fan base. The Redskins were also good during much of the 1970's, but not really a great team and did not develop a similar national following. Given the fact that most fans, especially casual fans, tend to ride bandwagons and especially given the fact that the Redskins/Cowboys rivalry became particularly heated in the George Allen era, local fans who either wanted to go with the winner, or simply be contrarian, or both, became Cowboys fans. So you have a generation of Cowboys fans born and then many of their children likely followed family alligences.

Then the cycle repeated in the 1990's. The Cowboys won 6 division titles and 3 Super Bowls in the decade and also appeared in several other Conference Championship games. They had Aikman, Emmitt, and Michael. John Madden loved them, they played on Monday Night Football all the time, etc. So the 1970's cycle repeated.

So my contention would be while the racial narrative makes better copy (and I don't deny that it explains the alligence of some), I think the majority of "displaced" Cowboys fans in the region have more basic motives for the rooting interests.