I was a baseball fan before I was a fan of any other sport, as I watched dozens of Chicago Cubs games on WGN on a tiny TV in my grandparents’ basement in 1988, where I realized that I loved the game (and the Cubs, although after a 20-ish year reign, the Royals finally overtook them as my favorite team). That winter, when the NBA season was going, I watched a lot of Chicago Bulls games too. For hockey, WGN carried the Chicago Blackhawks too, but I found myself falling in love with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Mario Lemieux (the namesake for my future first cat). In the NFL, I latched on to the Denver Broncos as my team. As I began to realize all these sports existed, I pretty much loved them all. I spent most of my TV watching from that point until adulthood watching either game shows of all kinds (Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Make the Grade, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, etc.) or sports of all kinds. And I mean all kinds. Throughout middle school, especially, I would watch ESPN and ESPN2 to watch and learn about different sports. If a major sport wasn’t on, I would watch bowling, cycling, archery, competitive shooting, whatever. I wanted to learn about the rules and who the best players/competitors were. When the French Open was on in June, and it was summer break, I would wake up and turn it on first thing in the morning (the time difference meant live matches in the morning in America) and watch as much as I could (Andre Agassi was my favorite tennis player). If a golf tournament was on, I would watch it, trying to learn as much as I could (and of course developing a favorite golfer: Payne Stewart). I would watch IndyCar and NASCAR (Mario Andretti and Rusty Wallace were my favorites). I would even watch things like the World’s Strongest Man Competition (who doesn’t like Magnus Ver Magnussen?) and even cheerleading competitions. When the Olympics were on, it was like a gold mine of new sports that I otherwise would never see. That let me learn about everything from badminton to ski jumping to curling to cycling to luge to motocross. And I loved it all.
I don't have the free time I used to have, but if I did, I would still watch any sport. For example, I'd love to know more about rugby and cricket. But at this point I mostly just watch the things I have the most interest in: college football (mostly K-State), any NFL game, March Madness, the NBA playoffs, the Royals, the MLB postseason (it's great when those last two are the same!), Sporting KC, and anything K-State. I would love to watch more, but I just don't have the free time to do it. But I still follow pretty much all sports and am aware of pretty much every story, as espn.com is my homepage, and I really enjoy keeping up on everything. I retain most of it, which has allowed me to do well in sports trivia contests. This was actually an intramural "sport" in college, and I placed very highly (4th, I think?) in the university-wide tournament. This has also served me well in the business world, as I travel to a lot of different cities, and on business lunches or meetings where sports come up, I can talk intelligently about whatever the favorite team is of the person I'm talking to.
I've also played sports when and where I could throughout my life. So between playing, watching, and following and reading about sports, I'm pretty much an all-around sports fan. My parents certainly recognized that, and because of that, they got me the All Around Sports Fan ornament (they should have hyphenated that, but whatever) that Hallmark made in the '90s. It's still on our tree today, and here I am holding it in this picture. But every time I see it, I think about how appropriate it is that I have that ornament.
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