How many of you are Orioles fans and Redskins fans?

[Domenic]

I think it's a combination of a couple things:

- DC has a lot of transplants from other areas

- DC loves the Redskins, to the point of relegating other sports to the back pages of the paper when the Redskins do something of minor note in the offseason.

So a lot of transplants can't stand the over-the-top Redskins love, so they decide to root for the Skins most hated rival. There's enough of these transplants that it bleeds over into native DC/Nova/Md people who want to be trendy.

You're right, but most of the transplants bring their former hometown teams with them when they arrive in DC. The majority of the Cowboy fans in the DC area grew up here and were raised by well-meaning Redskin fan parents. Kids like to rebel at times, so when they start following sports they pick the Cowboys to get at their parents. I used to work for a guy that was a Cowboy fan, and born and raised in Northern Va. Ironically, his brother was a Skins fan, but he had moved to Dallas for his job! The brother was older, and was infatuated with the Skins. When my old boss started following sports, he rooted for the Cowboys since his brother rooted for the Skins.

[Domenic]

99% of them never so much as stepped foot in the city of Dallas.

I can't take fans like that very seriously.

It seems for most of these Cowboys fans, their fandom is some form of rebellion.

I've been to a Cowboys game at Texas Stadium a few years ago, real Cowboys fans from Dallas are a very different breed than those who hop on board while living in different parts of the country. Real Cowboys fans are a pretty laid back group from what I see. Yet, the Cowboys fans who live in other parts of the country are very in your face about their fandom and feel the need to flaunt it.

Thats why I think their fandom is more about being different/rebellion than actually rooting for a particular team.

Whenever I meet a Dallas fan around here I always ask them how long it's been since they left Texas. Nine out of ten times, they respond with, "...oh I've never been there." Sickening...