Most fans fall in love by proximity. An entire elementary school cheers for the local team. Parents fly flags on cars. Maybe some kids are lucky enough to attend a few games. By pure osmosis we fall in love with our hometown teams.

Fandom, however, can also be learned later in life. My college had a D1 football program—one that I didn’t particularly care about growing up—but now, I watch religiously, listen to podcasts, and take my kids to games. That’s the easy case. You’re tied to your school for life, for better or worse. You won’t feel that same passion for another college that you didn’t give piles and piles of money to.

But what about artificial fandom? Can you choose a new team on a dime—for no reason at all? No connection, no shared history, no reference point. Pure whim. Is it possible to develop the same emotional attachment as teams you grew up with?

While most of us have excised early 2020 from our collective consciousness, that period when most athletic leagues were cancelled or postponed, I sought to do just this. To become a fan from scratch.

Obviously, good health and maintaining relationships were paramount at the time, but sports, for many of us, are a sanctuary—another means by which we receive crucial human connection. When there’s political turmoil or family grief, sports have always been a place to retreat. And during one of the toughest periods in recent history, we lost that backstop.

Sure, there was The Last Dance. We all turned to ESPN once a week to reminisce about the magic that was the 90s Chicago Bulls. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in the modern game that we forget how great our not-so-distant stars were. And this doc hit at the right time to remind us all that His Airness answers to no one—not even a King.

This filled the void briefly but couldn’t replace the mystery, hope, anxiety of fresh competition. So what to do? One of the first leagues to announce it was resuming play was the English Premier League. I grew up playing soccer and, like most Americans, get heavily invested in the World Cup every four years, but I never followed the MLS closely, or any international clubs. I even lived in London for a stretch of time, went to games with friends, watched at bars to support their football addictions, but despite these efforts, never managed to adopt a team.

But desperate times call for desperate fandom, and with few other sports available, I (along with two other equally psychotic friends) decided to try our hands at (lite) English football hooliganism.

A Constitution for Team Adoption

It’s a daunting task to build fandom from nothing. Most children do this over time by birthright or parental guidance. As a professional in my mid-twenties, I had no baseline for starting this new endeavor.

To find a new EPL team, we had to set some ground rules. We wanted to choose a team that wasn’t so close to the top of the table (notice how I wrote table and not standings; that’s a seasoned EPL follower right there). Nobody has time for bandwagon fans, and to choose a Liverpool or Manchester City at that time would’ve been insincere. The grossest kind of fandom. And come to think of it, major clubs like Chelsea and Manchester United and Arsenal are so commercially popular that choosing them wouldn’t have felt much better.

If I had had it my way, we would’ve started from the absolute bottom. That way no one could ever accuse us of frontrunning. We’d start with the leach of the league. But we were soon reminded that the EPL relegates its losers—a foreign concept for American sports fans. So we tried to find a club that hadn’t won the Premier League, hadn’t finished near the top, but also hadn’t been sent down for several years. For all we knew, anyone could pull a Leicester City miracle out of thin air.

Without realizing all the implications of relegation, it was critical to choose a team that could hang in the EPL because the TV-viewing experience was much more challenging below. NBC aired most top-tier games, while Championship (lower) division games were only occasionally shown on ESPN.

This narrowed our choices. Newcastle was in the mix, but they were also in the process of selling to the Saudi investment fund. Those future prospects felt a bit dodgy. It became a toss-up between West Ham and Southampton FC.

With no history with either club and nothing to base the decision on, we used the only logical tiebreaker: coolest jerseys. West Ham’s blue-maroon scheme was unique, but Southampton’s striped kits at the time were sharper. And so, armed with no knowledge but for a mediocre track record in the top division and jerseys that caught our eyes, we were now Southampton FC supporters.

Team Culture Crash Course

When you grow up with a team, you’re introduced by accident. You take a break from your toys because your parents are glued to a game on TV. They’re in a trance. You wonder what could be gripping them so completely, and you walk over. You don’t get it at first, but the images on screen intrigue you. Your parents notice your interest. It’s an opportunity to explain football, or basketball, or soccer, or whatever.

They’ll start with the basics. The red guys are good. The green guys are bad. See that player, he’s our favorite. You put the ball in the hoop, or the net. Then a few days later, you’ll watch another game. Rinse and repeat. You learn the team’s cheers. You go to your first game in-person. When you’re seven, you receive a team history book for your birthday. You haven’t read many books, but you race through this one cover-to-cover. You memorize facts. Then thirty years fly by, and you realize it’s the longest and purest but most tumultuous relationship in your life.

It’s hard to compete with that kind of history when starting from scratch. My parents didn’t watch soccer. The EPL was rarely broadcast growing up, so not only did I need a crash course in the team’s history, but also, I needed cliff notes on European soccer generally. Sure, it would’ve been easier to learn this when I was living in London, but it’s never too late.

Fortunately, I found upwards of a thousand YouTube videos to watch. I learned all about the club’s ascent through lower tiers and their original membership in the Premier League in 1992. It was a club of minor successes—some FA Cup appearances and a surprise win in the 70s. But it was a middling club at best. The occasional flirtation with relegation. The brief threat of an upper finish. I learned about the Saint’s anthem—When the Saints Go Marching In. I knew the tune, so that was easy. I read about St. Mary’s Stadium, which looked like any generic, older EPL home—though it was my home now, and I needed to show it some respect.

Most importantly, I learned about rivalries. Who did I now irrationally hate? Portsmouth. F ’em. The Pompeys. I have no idea what that is, and apparently neither do the football historians. They weren’t in the EPL at the time, so good riddance to them and their fans. It was actually easier to summon the hatred for the Pompeys at first. As a diehard Philadelphia fan I’m used to the hate. Actively cheering for my now-beloved Saints, on the other hand, was more difficult.

Next step: commemorate this newfound fandom. A tattoo would’ve been a step too far. I mean, what if the team didn’t catch on? What if I hated watching? Something so permanent would be a mistake. What about merch? Nothing says I’m a true fan quite like a fresh t-shirt, and for soccer fans (I learned) a scarf. I went to the Southampton FC website, and, like most UK merchants I’ve encountered, found myself on a platform from the Stone Age. Calculating the British Pound conversions revealed obscenely priced gear and exorbitant shipping costs that, during peak pandemic, were not guaranteed to arrive. No, this certainly would not do. Then what? Amazon—ol’ faithful. They never let me down. A knockoff t-shirt and scarf for twenty bucks? Perfect. Send ’em my way!

The (Real) Buy-In

Now that I was a true Southampton fan, I had to tune in and slowly learn the players. The first game of the restarted season was against Norwich City, bright and early out west. Frankly, this was already looking like a terrible plan. Sports first thing in the morning was not what I was used to.

After waking up, making myself coffee, working out, and grabbing a snack, I remembered that I had meant to watch the game. After fiddling around with the NBC Sports app on my terrible TV, I finally got it working. Okay 0-0, or nil-nil as I was soon to learn. After watching a few minutes, I could feel myself starting to get into it. I hadn’t watched much soccer beyond the occasional World Cup game, but the learning curve was minimal.

Then in rapid succession at the 49th minute. GOAL! SAINTS! 54th. GOAL! SAINTS! 79th minute. GOAL! SAINTS! What a way to start this journey! Perhaps this team would never lose. What did I just get myself into? Was this like buying Nvidia stock ten years ago? Were the Saints going to go on an epic run and soar to the top of the table? What a rush to start this relationship.

The following week was Arsenal—a team I certainly knew and assumed was pretty good. This Saints’ showing was much less inspiring, dropping the game 0-2. Despite that setback, the Saints bounced back and finished the COVID season with four wins (including one against Man City (EPL runners-up) and three ties.

The first few weeks felt like a chore, but soon, I started enjoying the routine. Growing up on the East Coast, my sports were in the afternoon and evening. I wasn’t ready for morning sports. But as I quickly learned, there’re few things better than a coffee and eggs with a side of soccer. The chore soon turned into a delight. By the end of that first short season, my Saturday mornings were structured around Saints games—the same way my Sunday afternoons centered around the Eagles.

What’s more, I could start to feel the angst. I got pangs in my gut as I watched a miraculous Danny Ings last-minute goal to tie a game, or a brilliant James Ward-Prowse free kick. Win and my day was lively, fun. Ties or losses, and I could feel that same cloud hover above me the way it does when the Phillies or Sixers lose.

I don’t think I could pinpoint when my true Saints fandom started—if it ever did. Probably not when I bought the gear or chose the team. It would’ve been too easy to walk away at those points. It probably didn’t start the first game I watched; though I certainly exacted some enjoyment for the first time in a while. It wasn’t one specific moment. Rather, I think it was the routine. And I think by the end of the COVID season, after watching those nine games, I could officially call myself a Saints fan, even though I had never stepped foot at St. Mary’s, had only a loose grasp of the team’s history, and could still only name a handful of players. But I was following Southampton the same way I followed my hometown teams. I was living and dying with outcomes. And if that’s not fandom, I’m not sure what is.

An Electrifying Rise and Ignominious Fall

One thing about the COVID delay and this newfound fandom was that the season ended in late July and started again in early September. It would normally take a few months to get to a new season, but the delay whittled down the break to a little more than one. It was perfect to keep the momentum going—both from a team standpoint, but also from a fan perspective. Too long a wait and I may lose interest—after all, the NFL season was returning.

Kicking the new year off against Crystal Palace would not be a joke, but based on how the Saints finished 2019-20, it was certainly a winnable game. And what did the Saints do? Lose. What did they do the following week to Tottenham? Lose. Hardly an auspicious start. Could my relationship with Southampton be souring? Is this what I signed up for?

But then, out of nowhere, that same magic from the previous season reemerged. Wins started to stack up against Burnley and Bromwich. Everton and Aston Villa. Newcastle and Sheffield. When the Saints tied Arsenal in mid-November, they were third in the EPL table. THIRD! And for a brief moment, FIRST, before the weekend’s results were tallied. That was the highest they’d been in some time, and a glorious welcome to the club.

I thought I struck gold. The team was so much fun to watch. Ings wasn’t the best forward in the EPL. He wasn’t as smooth or skilled as others. But he was a hustler. Efficient. The sort of player I appreciated as a Philly fan. And Ward-Prowse felt like he could score anywhere within 30 yards of the net.

These were some of the best times I’ve had being a fan (of any sport) in recent memory. It was new. It was fun. I was constantly learning. I felt like I was going to be a lifelong EPL fan. But the friends I started this little experiment with started to wane in their fandom, even though we typically texted about the results. I, however, remained steadfast.

But the joke was on me. The Saints would go on to finish the season with only 5 more wins, 16 losses, and 4 ties. It was brutal. Blown ties and losses in the final minutes of the game. Losses to easily beatable teams. Ugly wins. It had gotten hard to watch by the end, and with other sports reclaiming normalcy, my Saturday mornings were no longer exclusively reserved for Southampton games.

The Saints finished that season 15th. And much the way it felt like they couldn’t lose the year before, 2020-21 felt like there was no chance they’d survive another full campaign in the top division.

But I stayed with them and kept watching. Another 15th place season with the same hideous losses throughout. Maybe this is just what being an EPL fan meant for clubs below the top tier. But I felt that it was difficult to derive the same meaning I found in my American teams. The promise of each new season presented multiple directions. In the EPL, results felt preordained—entirely dictated by money and resources.

The unthinkable then happened. Relegation. I watched most games until March, which was the last time the Saints won a game that season. A 20th place finish sent them packing. The whole point of following this team was to have sports to care about during the pandemic. A team that I could put my dormant passion behind and follow. But what was the point if I wasn’t able to watch?

During the relegation year, I followed the team like a 1920s New York City latchkey kid. I’d check the scores on my phone (semi-regularly) and follow Southampton’s movement in the table. At this point, I was the only one of the original friends still following. I’d occasionally text a surprising, humorous, or successful result to the group and get sporadic comments in return. But they had moved on, back to the sports they grew up and had real histories with. I was still trying to build my history with the Saints, however. And much to my surprise, at the end of the 2023-24 season, the Saints won the playoff to get themselves back into the Premier League. Maybe the tide turned. Maybe I could get the gang back together for another run at the Premier League.

Sadly, the team didn’t look the same. Most top-tier players have provisions in their contracts that void the agreement if relegated. So by the time the Saints made their way back from the wilderness, they were a shell of their former selves, and they were working with a lot less money than their previous stint at the top division.

I was grateful to have my team back on TV—at least until they started the season with one tie and eight losses. Then it felt inevitable. Even though there was so much season left, it looked like the Saints were not going to survive in the EPL. Like my friends had done during previous seasons, I was going to cut my losses. They ended up 20th, and they’ve been in the lower division ever since. I haven’t watched a full EPL game in two years.

So Was it Ever Really Fandom?

This is the million-dollar question. After all this—four-plus years of dedicated support, heartbreaking losses, ecstatic wins, relegation, and a total loss of coverage—was I ever really a fan? Of course.

I also think I’ve gleaned a few things along the way that helped me understand fandom on a deeper level. For one, the community around sports is the most critical factor. I never attended a Southampton game. I never met anyone in London who was a Southampton supporter—or anyone in the States for that matter. I wasn’t living on fan Reddit threads. But I had a group of my closest friends decide we’d join the Saints. Even if it started out as a joke when there weren’t other sports on, we were still in it together. We learned the team chants; we learned the players; we texted about wins and commiserated about losses. It may sound trite, but obviously the other people in your fan bubble are what give the experience meaning.

I also took for granted the importance of access. And I think that’s something our leagues should remember when they agree to air NBA or NFL games across ten platforms. It’s hard to be a fan when you aren’t able to watch. It requires a certain amount of privilege to be a fan. Who knows what direction my Southampton fandom would’ve veered had I been able to always watch every week in the lower division. I hadn’t been with the team long enough to survive the distance.

And even though I lost my love for the Saints, I do think I experienced genuine fandom for those few years. Losses stung. My days were ruined. Wins put a bounce in my step. But if that same fandom can be lost due to a TV schedule, how fragile is it? Maybe it can be reclaimed. Maybe I’ll start watching EPL again. But until then, I can at least savor those feelings I had at the beginning, when that unremarkable club from southern England pulled us from the sporting abyss and rescued us from our despair and loneliness, welcoming our brief support. And for that fleeting moment when Southampton soared atop the table, and all the Saints were marching, we were too.

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Matt Lanark is a writer and recovering attorney in the DC area. He writes about sports, culture, and parenting.