The first NFL game I remember was seeing Marino getting sodomized by the Jags in the divisional round in '99. Since then, being a Dolphins fan has been nothing but pain. The thing is, for some reason I’m totally okay with the Dolphins underperforming. Even this season, which is late playoff run or bust, I’m completely understanding of all our failures. As long as the Fins even smell like they’re on the right track, I’m ecstatic.
Within the same general time frame, one of the first college games I remember is the University of Miami destroying Nebraska in the National Championship. The Canes were dominant. Everybody was going to the NFL. These days I have no patience for the Canes. My standards are so much higher. It doesn’t make sense to view these two teams through such a different lens.
Is it just me, or do you guys also benchmark against your early memories? Trying to figure out why I didn’t love the Dolphins any less during their one win season, but a 5 loss Canes gives me heartburn.
As a Texans fan through the Kubiak and Buttchin era… The only thing I expect to see is an elite Wide Receiver.
Nah, I’ve been watching the Dolphins get rekt for years and it’s still as painful as ever
My flair combined with the fact I was born in the 70s says “yes.”
My childhood consisted of my team just Fucking leaving and it’s been pain and misery since so I guess yea. Bar set.
Grew up with the Urlacher Bears. It’s all been 100% downhill since Lovie Smith was fired. And at least the Super Bowl team had a legendary defense and I could make fun of the Sex Cannon at QB. And that’s an actual funny joke. The Bears have been a really unfunny joke for over a decade now. Whenever the QB throws it deep and it’s picked off I can’t say “You just gotta unleash the dragon” and laugh it off knowing the defense is coming into the field. Now everything just sucks and it’s not funny at all. The whole identity of the team has been gone for years and years. And then the '18 team which was actually really good has its season end on the goddamn double doink. The Bears were good enough that year that they’d certainly have made the Super Bowl if they win that game. But nope…ended on a joke.
Besides WWE/Impact wrestling… I did not watch sports growing up, unfortunately. I started watching college football in the fall of 2006 when I was 19 years old. I started really liking it, love college football now. Then in 2018 someone asked if I would like to play in their fantasy football league. I never watched any NFL games besides a few Superbowls at that point but I said sure. I really got into and and playing fantasy football was fun. As an added part of it, I started watching the games to see how my players did. I mainly watch the Sunday night and Monday night games. The NFL has taken away the Thursday night ones to hide them behind having to sub. to Amazon…
Your childhood setting the bar of expectations is completely accurate. Watching my team win back to back Super Bowls while in elementary school definitely set an unreasonable bar.
As a result, I feel like I’m a fan of (insert whichever historically awful franchise is in your division) and am in a panic every year because **checks notes** 5 franchises have won a SB more recently than the Broncos. “The pain I have to endure, this is bullshit!” STFU me every week
I was 6, 8 and 9 when the Elway Broncos lost three Super Bowls. My whole childhood was spent obsessed with football and obsessed with the dream that one day we would win the Super Bowl.
I was 17 and 18 when the Elway Broncos went back to back. It was an experience that in many ways summed up closure on my childhood. As a kid I would live, breathe and sleep the Denver Broncos and dream desperately that the Broncos would win a Super Bowl like it was the most important thing that could ever happen in my life. John Elway was my ultimate life role model and summed up the epitome of an American hero. By the age of 18, there were more things in my life - college, girls, career plans, desires to travel and work abroad which meant I would see a world outside America and football.
But it was a wonderful way to get closure on that footballing childhood to see the Broncos win those rings, and it was also poignant to see Elway depart at the same time as my childhood. I was going to have to find new heroes in life beyond my quarterback.
My childhood watching the Broncos taught me a few parallels that have stayed with me in life. I had a major crush on a girl from about the age of 13 to 16, we were pretty good friends but I was way too socially awkward to say anything. Then I remember her starting to date this other dude, her first boyfriend, when I was 16.
Almost around exactly the same time, the Broncos had that haunting defeat to the Jags in the playoffs where the Broncos had looked set for a Super Bowl run and lost the divisional round. It was awful for Broncos fans because we thought Elway isn’t going to be around forever and that could be the closing of our window. And it also struck me with this girl - we were likely going off to college at 18. I was probably never going to see her again after that. There was a ‘window’ and if I got a shot again I had to take it.
Well, she dated this guy for about a year and then they had a break up, and I had to make my move, and yeah, she started going out with me. This was the year the Broncos won their first ring. It was like a lesson in life about taking your chances and recognizing the finite windows of opportunity in life. We were still dating when the Broncos won the second Super Bowl, but then we went to college in different places, and when we tried to do it long distance it faded away, just like the Broncos faded away without Elway.
But I was much better placed to deal with life and opportunities after that. And also that Broncos childhood has given me a strong belief in life that it might take you a long time to achieve something and you might have a lot of moments where you get close and just miss out, and others where you seem to be regressing alarmingly backwards. But if you make sure your fundamentals are right, the way you apply yourself to something, and the way you never quit in adversity like Elway didn’t, you have a shot at being rewarded in the end.
So for me, whatever the Broncos do or don’t do, that footballing childhood following the Broncos was an amazing experience and something for which I am eternally grateful.
Yep. I can’t enjoy my NFL team unless they up and move to Nashville and take all the history and branding rights with them.
Yep, I was 9-years-old when Jerry bought the team, and I was just starting to really follow/understand sports. Watched Jimmy build a team that won three Super Bowls. I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll never see anything like that again.
The first season I fully started watching the NFL was 2016, where we moved the ball with ease. It certainly took me a while to realise that it’s not completely normal to expect the team to march down the field.
Distinctly remember watching a 99 yard drive like it was nothing against the Seahawks in the playoffs. An absolute buzzsaw down the field
Let’s see… the first season I remember watching as a kid was about 1991 and I’ve watched and hated it ever since.
Yep, still a football fan.
Grew up as a bucs fan, so… yeah.
The first glimmer of success I remember was when they got Derrick Brooks, Sapp, Lynch, Alstott in the mid 90s.
Had a nasty Defense, but was still quarterbacked by Trent Dilfer
Born in 03 to parents who root for the Seahawks and Patriots. I’ll be the first to admit success is all I’ve known and losing affects me more than the average fan probably.
But I’m not a fair weather and wont stop following because we’re losing.
I grew up in the 90s. The standards are… not high. Being a reasonably competent football team is all I’m ever asking for.