If you are reading this column, it is highly likely you are a fan of some sports team on some level, whether it be pro, college or high school, or at least are a fan of a particular sport, whether it be baseball, golf, tennis, NASCAR, rodeo, etc.

What interests me about the particular fandom of the many people is how they got there.

What made you a fan of Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Alabama, the Saints, Harvard, the Lakers, the St. Louis Cardinals, etc.?

And those are stories I would like for you to share with me. Jot down in a couple of paragraphs about how you became a fan of a particular school, team, or sport and e-mail it to me at starsportsboss@yahoo.com

As a sports fan, I can pull for just about anybody, with the exceptions being the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees (due to my personal fandom of the Atlanta Braves) and anything remotely connected to former Minnesota Twins first baseman Kent Hrbek (just check out the 1991 Word Series and the Ron Gant incident to understand that one).

But, I do have my favorites. Here are some of those and why:

•Basically, I pull for anybody in the SEC and those teams competing against the Big (pre)TEN(d) and the PAC-12. The reason is very philosophical — they don’t think very highly of us Southerners, so I don’t think very highly of them.

•Also, I can pull for all teams from the state of Mississippi, from the two SEC schools to Southern Miss, to the SWAC schools, to Mississippi College, etc. I’m a homeboy, and I like for Mississippi to win.

•Sometimes, I pull for the school, and other times it’s the coach or the particular team. I love University of Southern Mississippi baseball mostly because of my personal connection to Corky Palmer and Scott Berry, the most recent two head coaches there. I grew up 30 miles from Starkville, so I’ve always wanted Mississippi State to do well, and I in particular was a huge fan of the MSU women’s basketball team under Vic Schaefer. I just loved the way they played. While Andy Kennedy, who I coached in little league baseball with he was 9, was the head men’s basketball coach at Ole Miss, I pulled for the Rebels. Now he coaches at UAB, so I pull for the Blazers. I also follow Kentucky men’s basketball because that’s my oldest son, Ryan’s, favorite team.

•As far as the pros go, it began rather simply. I was born in Atlanta, Ga., so when I began following sports at the age of 11 in 1969, I adopted all of the Atlanta sports franchises as my favorites. The only one that really stuck was the Atlanta Braves, and I give credit to that longevity to the fact that on July 7, 1972, I traveled from my home in Louisville, Mississippi, to visit relatives in Atlanta and went to my first professional sporting event: a doubleheader between the Braves and the Pirates. I was hooked on that night and have been ever since.

•After becoming a sportswriter, I began covering the New Orleans Saints on a fairly regular basis, so I began to follow them and actually became an avid Saints fan. Then they went and cut Morten Andersen — one of the greatest place-kickers of all time — and I was fed up with their foolishness. 

I came home from work and told my sons Ryan and Bradley that we were no longer Saints fans. I didn’t care who they wanted to follow, but it wouldn’t be them. It just so happened the the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers were joining the NFL the following season, so we became Carolina Panthers fans and have been to this day — so much so that my son Bradley actually lives in Charlotte.

•Since Bradley has moved to Charlotte, he has also become a Hornets fan, so they are now my favorite NBA team. He went to a dozen or better games this year and actually took his mom and me to one, so there you go.

•I follow the Florida Panthers in hockey because one of my cousins is an equipment manager with the team, and I’m a fan of the University of Oklahoma softball team because my 9-year-old granddaughter loves them. She loves them, so do I. It’s as simple as that.

So now, please take the time to tell me your stories, and just maybe later this year I will share some of those stories with the readers of this newspaper. 

Austin Bishop, AKA The Old Sports Dude, has been covering high school, college, amateur, and professional sports since 1975. He is currently pastor of Great Commission Assembly of God in Philadelphia. He may be contacted by email at starsportsboss@yahoo.com or by phone at 601-938-2471.