My Biggest Complaint About Referring To Pro Sports Teams As “We”

As the old saying goes, “There is no ‘I’ in team.”

There ain’t no “We” either unless you are on the team or somehow associated with the team in some official capacity. If you don’t play for the Dallas Cowboys, or you’re not employed by the Cowboys organization, it’s not “we”, it’s “they”.

Although, pro sports teams probably don’t have a problem with you thinking in terms of “we” instead of “they” because a franchise is all about money, when you start saying stuff like “We really made a great decision when we traded for Alex Rodriguez” you’ve crossed the fan line and landed in fan-stalkerdom. Again, pro sports teams don’t give a crap and will surely never tell you to your face that you are not actually on the team. If a pro sports team can get you to buy into the group mentality of “we”, you’re probably more likely to think you can have an impact on the game by buying a jersey or two, or ten.

Just because the New York Yankees have “New York” in front of their name, they don’t represent New York in any capacity. Think differently? Two words for ya - “Brooklyn Dodgers”.

Did everybody in Brooklyn get up and head out to Los Angeles? No. “We, the people of Brooklyn” stayed right where we are and “they, the team we used to love” moved and started sucking royally.

Now if you went to a particular school, you have every right to latch onto the collective. It’s perfectly OK to consider yourself as part of the group that is the team because the team actually represents something of which you are a part. If you went to Notre Dame and you’re pissed off at the total lack of offensive production from the football team this season, you can say “We need to get rid of Coach Weis because we are very fickle and we expect entirely too much in the first place.”

Of course once you turn your back on the institution to which you once belonged, you can go back to “they”, no problem, no questions asked.