Blame it all on my roots..

[fredtoast]

I started playing Pee-Wee Football in 1972.  I was 9 years old in the fourth grade.  That was the earliest you could play back then.  My dad was not a huge sports fan, but he had played baseball and basketball growing up and still watched some.  However he had never played football so he did not pay much attention to it.

Even though I would continue to play basketball and baseball, football would become my favorite sport.  And since Cincinnati was nearby (I grew up in Franklin) I have always been a Reds and Bengals fan.  The Bengals were a good team when I first started following them closely in 1973. The Reds were a dynasty in the making.  And the Buckeyes (my first jersey was a scarlet 45) were contending for a national championship every year.

It was a good time to become a sports fan.

BTW, even though I moved away fro Ohio in 1981 I was still an OSU fan until after I attended the University of Tennessee in the late 80's.  Now the Vols are my college team.  I have lived in cities with other professional sports teams (Nashville, Denver), but I have never wavered in my support of the Reds and Bengals.  And I paid for those good days of my youth in the 90's when my favorite pro teams were the Bengals, Reds, and Nuggets.