I love high school sports. Duh!

That’s only because I’ve been working in it for almost 15 years. For almost all of those years, high school sports has been the only thing I really think about. However, working at the newspaper, I have to keep tabs on more college and professional sports for layout and agate purposes.

Within our five-person sports staff, including a couple of our news people, the Cubs, Bears, Brewers, Iowa, Falcons and LSU are topics of discussion.

Growing up, I had my favorite teams, but I never really knew why they were my favorite. Most of it was because other kids were fans of the Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks, Sox, Cubs, etc. I grew up when the Bulls had their pair of three-peats, I graduated high school when the Sox won the World Series, and the Cubs have a following for reasons I still cannot comprehend.

I went to grade school with twin sisters who were Seahawks fans. All the way from Seattle? A program whose only stars at the time were Steve Largent and Cortez Kennedy? Okay …

I never really cared about college or professional sports. I don’t like getting my mind too wrapped up around them, because I like to focus on important things in my life – like my life, goals, whatever. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll watch a big event and have a rooting side, but I don’t tend to want to know what the second-string nose tackle had for breakfast.

It seems absolutely strange for a sports person like me to not care about professional or college sports teams, but I am more interested in the interesting, something different from the usual team rooting.

However, if there was a gun to my head:

Baseball: White Sox (I am a Frank Thomas fan)
Basketball: Bulls (generic response)
Hockey: Blackhawks (They are my biggest pro sports following)
Football: Packers (I’m gonna get a lot of flack for this, but I can’t see myself rooting for the Bears right now)
College: Wisconsin (Madison is a great city) and Sauk (alma mater)
NASCAR: #3 (Haven’t cared about the sport since)