A few weeks ago I was at dinner with a large-ish group of friends. The  conversation was all over the place, which is fine, as my head follows nothing less than random. At some point, we started discussing what our various quirks are. That convo took place late on a Thursday night, by Friday afternoon the only thing I could come up with was I think I look retarded in overly girly earrings and I refuse to eat veal and lamb. LAME.

Somewhere around the same time, a reader posted a comment that started out with “Miles Austin? Really?!” So that got me thinking – and not about Miles Austin, ass holes…

Wish me luck

Lucky charms

Sports quirks. Quirks of the sports fan. (By the way, I’ve reached the point where I’ve typed quirk so much it looks like the weirdest word EVER). We all have rituals and superstitions, as all die hard fans do. Because I’m mentally challenged, there were two songs I listened to every time I headed to Santa Monica to watch a game with the Cowboys group – “Gimme More” by Brit Brit and “A Milli” by Lil Wayne. True story, cause why exactly would I make that up? In addition, I have a necklace with The Star on it, the first game I forgot to wear it? We not only took our first loss, we lost to the Redskins. Ew. But superstitions aren’t really quirks, they’re more like examples of our retardedness and how we’ve convinced ourselves a team’s ability to win or lose is dependent upon what color of underwear we wear (or whether we wear underwear at all…wait, what?).

Per my response to the aforementioned reader’s comment, I realized I have a Crazy Little Sports Quirk(ish). Ready for this? I don’t favoritize (did I just make that word up?) players that everyone else does. Meaning, I will move on to my next favorite player once one becomes too popular. Hence the constant question of “Miles Austin? Really?!” I became a Marion Barber fan three years ago when he fell onto my first fantasy team. I bought my white Barber jersey two years ago, my blue Barber jersey last year. Then I went to a game in Dallas. It was like the number 24 had staged an attack on Texas Stadium.  I can’t be having that. I’d already taken a liking to young Miles during Hard Knocks and was keeping an eye on his performance (dirty). So I thought, well, WHY NOT?! So I ordered my custom Austin jersey and as of right now, I’m going to take a guess that there aren’t TOO many out there. I have a suspicion that won’t last long, however. Blurgh. Anyhow, I’ve always been this way, I was even worse with hockey. I worshiped the ground Mike Modano walked on, until he blew the f*ck up, became Mr. Dallas and I was like, okay, not cool anymore – we’re done. I went onto Jamie Langenbrunner. Same thing happened, had to break up with him as well (and then he went and got himself traded to the Devils, he was so heartbroken). Then I picked an absolutely not really known outside of the fans of the teams he played for player in Petr Buzek. I OWNED that number one fan spot and almost ran with it right  into the loony bin (or into a restraining order).

This leads me to admit that some may question my reasoning behind picking favorite players. I don’t pick players for why a lot of people probably THINK I do. I look for potential and I look for heart. I like ‘em when they still play for the love of the game…when they’re still up and coming. So, you can have your mass produced Romo and Witten jerseys. Make fun of me all you want, fools, I’m okay being a crazy with an Austin jersey.