Blythe Terrell had been a Rams fan since the age of 12, when the team arrived in St. Louis. Terrell failed to account for the principle of “easy come, easy go,” however, and the team’s decision to head to Los Angeles came as a cruel shock. Clearly, it was time to root for a new NFL team. But which one?
Since Terrell works for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, clearly the only possible approach was to compile and attempt to analyze as much data as possible. (Not that this always leads to correct answers, as Silver has been proven spectacularly wrong about everything from World Cups to presidential elections.) Nevertheless, Terrell set out to answer (with the help of senior sportswriter Neil Paine) 3,352 questions in order to find a new team to root for. Terrell writes:
“Neil’s analysis graded each team in 16 categories—some of which were taken from ESPN the Magazine’s long-running ‘ultimate standings‘ (which use surveys conducted by opinion research firms in a similar attempt to quantify the benefits of rooting for each pro franchise in the U.S. and Canada), and some we calculated ourselves. Each reflected a component of a team’s identity, including ownership, uniforms, the club’s fan-friendliness, and winning tradition. Plugging those factors into the website All Our Ideas, he created a form that would be able to weight each category by its importance to my own fandom.”
To read the full article and learn more about determining your team when you’re no longer bound by geography, click here. (Incidentally, the Green Bay Packers came out on top.) Below, watch how other St. Louis fans reacted to their team leaving for the West Coast.
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
