For me it’s the same as watching a ballet, but without the predetermined outcome of narrative theatre/dance. In the process of this, I need a protagonist I relate to. The easiest emotional connection I’m going to form is to my hometown teams given my mnemonic and experiential connection to it, especially having lived prior to the genera death of monocultural and regional identity in the US.

In the case of my alma mater and college sports, I tend to relate it as imagine your local sporting club association football team, but attach it to an entity that plays a gigantic part in educating you, housing you for your first time alone (in a walkable community no less), feeding you, facilitating your first experiences as a young adult away from home, setting up your professional network and several adult friendships — and in my case — hooks up your first big-boy job, licenses and the high pay that follows. So yeah, I’ll buy the sweatshirt and hoot like a doofus for my alma maters’ bottom-wrung Big Ten and PAC 12 teams every January and March. Hell, I’ll wear the free suits they gave me every quarter while I’m at it.