Face it, you can’t claim to be a real fan unless you have at least a coffee mug with your favorite team’s logo on it — or some of them cushy gripper socks (with the little rubber goodnesses on the bottoms for that extra bit of grippy-ness when you’re trash pail balling in your boxers in your dorm room) or something! I’m not saying you’re not a REAL fan if you don’t have any fan gear but I am saying you need to SWAG IT UP!

Suggestion: At least grab one of those jersey Tee’s my brother Chris rocks when he watches the games. It’s like a t-shirt and a jersey — combined! And for some reason, I feel like no matter what name is on them they always have double zeros, so they’re even kinda player neutral. WIN.

It’s nearly impossible to watch a game without hearing the names of the players in your starting 5 or 11 or 7, or whatever weird sport you watch, being called at some point in the broadcast. If you can’t name 3 of them, it most assuredly says that you follow your team via the box score only, and by box score I mean via the the final score posted in Tweets.

Baller Tip: I ain’t gonna lie. I used to figure out my lineups of Madden or NBA 2K, but hey, I knew who was on my squad…and better yet, I knew their madden and 2K ratings. Don’t line your 75 cornerback up against my 92 receiver! You already know what it is!

If I ask you what division your team plays in and you tell me ‘West Coast’, don’t talk to me anymore. We can’t be friends. We can’t even have healthy fan banter if you rolling like that. This ain’t gang wars man! There’s levels to this!

A little Kanye-ism for you:  If you telling me you design t-shirts and I’m trying to talk about high-fashion (scarfs and leather jogging pants and posh stuff like that) then how can you then prove to me you know where I’m coming from? How Sway? You ain’t got the answers Sway!

You do realize that by definition, that this is exactly what a bandwagon fan is right?

Okay, so here’s the deal. If you legitimately and I mean legitimately cannot find a better reason to root for your team, it doesn’t mean you are a bad person (although it may allude to some serious underlying psychological discrepancies that may need to be recorded and closely monitored) it just makes you Ricky Bobby.

I’m sure it’s a fast paced cocaine fueled fantasy lifestyle that get’s you few championships. But realize THAT makes you a Miami fan (ouch).

Got a a bit carried away with that metaphor. #nodisrespect

But in seriousness, it most certainly means you should NEVER be afforded the privilege of having an intellectual sports conversation with fans who have earned their fan stripes. If you don’t know what fans stripes are, talk to a Cleveland Browns or a Chicago Cubs fan. I’ll throw Buffalo in there too.

I don’t even need to explain to you why this is the case, do I? Unless you are from Seattle and were looking for a team to root for when the Sonics left town, don’t even tell me you’re a lifer…don’t lie to my face like that, so disrespectfully.

Heck, I’ll make this bold statement, any millennial claiming to be a die hard Seattle fan clearly has hopped on the wagon in the last 3-4 years (and that’s being generous).

But real talk, I can’t even lie, I’m a closet Seattle fan though. They’re my backup team. fan, fam DON’T JUDGE ME. This is my article!