The Making of a Redskins Fan ; How Did YOU Become One?

Living DEEP in the heart of Texas, I've been asked quite a few times on 'how in the hell did you become a Redskins fan?'

This got me thinking. Some. OK, a lot. I understand the geographical reasoning behind it, if you live in or near D.C., but there are plenty who don't.

Well, i'm sure some of the stories will be very interesting, and being we still have a few months before pre-season begins, it wouldn't hurt to indulge in some in-depth knowledge of just exactly how you became a Redskins fan. What could it hurt?

For me, it started in either 72' or 73', not exactly sure, being I was only 7-8 years old. My brother was watching our little 13" b&w t.v., watching the Cowboys Redskins game. He seemed to be rooting for the Cowboys, so in a natural brotherly way, it was only right for me to root for the other team. Needless to say, the Skins beat them, 14-7 I think. When it was over, I looked at him and asked 'did I win did I win?" And as any big brother would do, he hit me. Didn't hurt, but I did go crying like a ***** to my mom, who told me to go outside and play.

The rest was history.

*On a lighter note; that Christmas, our dad got us both matching BB guns, and I got home from school before he did, so when I saw him walking home through the field, I pointed the bb gun out the front door and shot his ass !!

Payback's a *****...:logo:

I've never known anything else. I was born & raised in the DC area, most of the time a stone's throw from Redskins Park. Both of them. My mother & Grandmother were both huge Redskins fans & would watch the games every week. That's where I would be, watching with them. I was 7 or 8 when we won our first Super Bowl & I still remember the Post's front page photo of people on the light poles & & flooding the streets to celebrate. Somehow, even then, I knew the Cowboys were center of all things that are evil & have always hated them.

I moved to Mobile, Al a few years ago & while there really aren't a lot of pro football fans here (or real fans anyway), I stay true to my Redskins & make sure everyone around me knows where my loyalties lie. Of course, the Redskins logo & Sean Taylor tattoos are big give-aways.

I didn't become one, I was born one. Burgundy and gold runs in the family, I didn't have a choice.

right around 1991

five years old is a very impressionable age, my parents and grandparents were huge fans

considering what happened that season, how could I not be a fan?

Around 87 I got into sports and wanted to be different and not root for my home team so I picked up a newspaper and picked a team from each sport. Redskins, Braves and Spurs still root for all 3 to this day.

Born and raised in southeast DC, plus my pops was a huge fan.

I guess i am a bandwagon fan. Superbowl 17 was the first superbowl shown live in the UK on Channel 4 back in the eighties.

I have been a fan ever since. Some years i didn't get to see them on TV at all ( i missed most of the late 90's as i didn't have Satellite TV at the time.)

I now have NFL Gamepass (the RG3 effect) so i can now watch them live including staying up til 4am on Monday night football!

I only have seen them play once - an 80's pre season game played in London (but i did get to see my favourite player at the time - Alvin Walton)

But this season i will be cheering them on from this side of the Atlantic

Micky - UK

HTTR

My Dad chose his team based on who won the first game he saw which just happened to be SBXVII. About 20 years later when I caught the NFL bug I chose to adopt the same logic. The New England Patriots won that game and for about a season I half-heartedly followed the Patriots.

Truth is, I liked to talk about the NFL with my Dad and I'd read up all about the Redskins so I knew what I was talking about. Sometime during the 2006 season, probably about the same time Sean Taylor returned a blocked field goal against Dallas and I was shouting the loudest of any Redskins fans in the room, I knew then who my team was.

That's like asking how did I become a fan of chicken

This has come up many times before. Not sure we ever had a whole thread about it but regardless, I don't mind sharing again.

I'm originally from Ohio. I became a Redskins fan because my parents were, plain and simple. The mystery is how did they start rooting for the Skins? I really don't know but I guess it may have been simply that they hated the Boys really bad and gravitated to the polar opposite thereof. I started paying attention to the games (the few we got to see there) in about 1980; like many others posting here, I was five years old. I kinda remember our first SB win, ditto the loss the next year. 1987 I remember a bit better, and 1991...ah now THAT was a good time to be a Skins fan in an odd place. I was "that guy", my team was dominating the league, and I was a sophomore in high school. And no hate from other fans, just kudos and congratulations, even from Cowboy fans (of course there were more of them than us even in OH).

in 1972 i was 8 years old and i liked their colors. alot of kids liked the dolphins. of course i am anti social and went with the skins in the s.b.i've been with them ever since. i live in south philly, been here all my life lol.. httr !!!!!

I was born into it. My dad is a huge Skins fan as was his father. Look in any of our family photos from when I was a baby and I'm usually clad in Redskins clothes in one form or another. About 97 I got the itch. Sundays over a buddies house and everyone but me was outside partying. I was inside watching the Redskins play. No matter how terrible they were. And we know they were terrible at times. From then on I've never missed a game. Even when me and my girl flew to Cancun I made sure to find a tv to watch the game. (Redskins vs. Giants last year first game>.<Damnit)

Week 1 of 1993 Season, beating Dallas. Watching my dad get into the skins/boys game, it got me glued to the TV and it snowballed from there. 1993 season was a tough time to start following them, but I never left the skins.

The 1991 Super Bowl was the first football game I can remember. The rest is history.

2 words: George Allen.

Like Lefty made Maryland Basketball George Allen put the Redskins on map, even locally. When I was young rooting for the Redskins was like rooting for the Wizards, most kids gravitated towards other teams. Mine was the Colts. But Allen suddenly made the Redskins winners and they instantly took over the town. By his second year I was hooked and have been there ever since.

I was born into a major Redskin family. Very little choice.

I am 31 from Tennessee and I remember watching the Redskins play when I was like 6 years old. I remember everyone talking about how much they hated the Redskins. Then I saw the logo on the helmet, and at that moment I became a life long SKINS fan, and have been ever since. Little did I know that I would move to Harrisburg PA, and for a while get to go to training camp next to Dickenson College in Carlisle, and watch the Skins! My step dad also ran a restaurant "Rillo's", and the Skins while in training camp would eat there, and he had a picture of Gibbs and the Skins on his wall!

RIP Joe Rillo (my step dad) and the most honest giving person I have ever met!

Im over in the UK and no-one else in my family is into NFL, I got into it by watching Superbowls, then watching more and more regular season games at random, then playing Madden finally forced me to pick a team. There was absolutely no logic behind choosing the Skins, it just felt right and I've never looked back. This will be my 9th season watching NFL, and my 7th as a Skins fan.

My step-father rooting for the Dolphins against the Skins started me out, the Colts leaving Baltimore cemented it.

My step father (who is born and bred in MOCO) brought me up as a Dallas Fan until he left when I was 10. Naturally, I started to become a redskin fan to piss him off and have been one ever since haha. Plus, it is my hometown team

---------- Post added April-16th-2013 at 08:02 AM ----------

Plus, it is my hometown team.

Born and raised on the B&G.

Most of the family are Redskin fans, with a few stray dogs in the family that root for other teams, but luckily no one roots for the Cowboys, Eagles or Giants. Someone in the family has had season tickets since back when they played at Griffith Stadium.

Picked up all the local teams because they were on TV and radio (Bullets, Capitals and Terrapins). Senators left when I was 4, so the only baseball I knew was the Orioles, so I became a fan. I think if DC had have replaced the Sens in the late 70s or early 80s, I would be a Nationals fan.

I was a Diplomats fan and have gravitated to United. I indirectly root for the Mystics to do well. I was never into Georgetown like some are. I couldn't stand John Thompson, so I became a MD fan.

Mainly, because all the teams are the hometown teams and the family has been rooting for them for a long time.

Ironically enough for me, I became a fan mostly because of my love of and obsession with Native American culture. I say "ironically," because of all the buzz about the name being "racist," etc. Maybe it is, I don't know, but when I was a kid, I associated it with what I viewed as the nobility of Native Americans.

I was actually a Colts fan first. I used to have a Colts trash can with Unitas and Mackie and many other greats on it. But I switched at around 6 or 7 back in the mid 1970s.

Part of it also had to do with another obsession I had with a song. It was called "Mister Custer." It was already an old song when I heard it and got the 45 rpm single, but I played the HELL out of this song. I listened to it multiple times every day, and it drove my parents nuts. But the thing about this song that really stood out was that they used the term "redskin" in it. "There's a redskin waitin' out there, fixin' to take my hair." As I look back, I think that helped spark my interest, too.

But I used to read every book I could find on Indian culture, and to this day, I remember a lot about the various tribes - the Hopi, the Navaho, the Crow, the Sioux. When I played Cowboys and Indians, you can bet what side I chose.

Plus, I did live in the Maryland area, so we were exposed to the Redskins then as much as the Colts. I thought their uniforms were cooler, I loved the Indian associations, I loved the personalities of guys like George Allen and Sonny and Billy and Charley Taylor, etc., etc. It seemed like an effortless transition. No one else in my family cared as much about football or the Redskins as much as me. Not even close. So I can honestly say that I CREATED what I hope will be a long running familial tradition from here on out.

Anyway, here's a link to that song. Anyone else remember this one?

It was 1982. I was 5 years old, and now old enough to attend games w/ my dad on our family's season tix, which I still have. It was the first year of life I can clearly remember. The night of SB17 was sweet.

Was a casual NFL watcher until my friends started getting into it about 10 years back. Was in the doctors office waiting for my Dad when i saw the cover of Sporting News magazine. It was Clinton Portis on the front smiling next to a fresh Skins helmet. There was a huge article in there about Gibbs return and how he was gonna restore D.C back to a winning team. A couple days later im watching the draft and we pick up my favorite hurricane Sean Taylor with the 5th pick. The rest is history.