Removed from the list today:

• Stoke City- personal reasons as mentioned before, and just don’t find them that interesting
• Sunderland- not consistent enough- I want to root for an underdog with a chance, not a team fighting relegation
• Portsmouth- Iffy ownership situation for one, not a compelling team anyway.
• Hull City- Scrappy team with good potential, but still too much risk of relegation for my taste.

This leaves the following teams, which I’ve loosely ranked but is by no means the difinitive order:

• Aston Villa
• Tottenham Hotspur
• West Ham United
• Fulham
• Manchester City
• Blackburn Rovers
• Bolton Wanderers
• Wigan Athletic

• Aston Villa – In the Europa league, cool unis, like the donated uniform space.
• Blackburn Rovers – like their unis too, like the history, up and down last few years
• Bolton Wanderers- bounce around the bottom half of the table, silly betting sponsor
• Everton- horrible uniforms.  Were in the top few in consideration until I saw their shirts.
• Fulham- in the mix, like the upward trend over the last few years.
• Hull City- interesting team with what looks like a bright future, but that position is filled for me by UCF.
• Manchester City- another team I’m drawn toward- bright future, some success already if not a lot, good looking kits.
• Portsmouth- just purchased by a UAE businessman which could mean good things, right?
• Stoke City- Good long term outlook, but dated a girl who’s family was from there- bad news.
• Sunderland- seem to be in & out of relegation too much for comfort.
• Tottenham Hotspur- up and down last few years, like the rivalry with big 4 Arsenal (‘Arsenal’ was the name of the traveling youth team where I spent some time growing up and was made up of the douchiest 6th graders the world has ever seen).
• West Ham United- recommended by the sole commenter to date, like the history, love the jerseys, love the crest.  Most definitely in the mix.
• Wigan Athletic- only team I’d never heard of before this project.  Don’t seem all that interesting.

I think I’ll do this thing elimination-style until I settle on a team.  At the moment, the bottom 3 are Stoke City (personal history), Wigan Athletic (who?), and Everton (jerseys).  And from that pool, I must eliminate Everton, because who would want to start their EPL Fandom with a shirt that atrocious?  I wish them well, especially against the rivals of whoever I pick, but they cannot be my new favorite team.

Long story:  I want to pick an English Premier League team to support and I’m looking for input.  I’m not a complete soccer newb, but I can’t say I follow it.  I played on usually bad teams up until 8th grade or so, but never tried out for the high school team and haven’t played much since.  I watch the World Cup enthusiastically every time it comes around, and a little of the Euro ‘XX tournaments if I can find coverage, and maybe even some WC qualifying but not much.

My interest in soccer was renewed a month ago when I found myself kicking the ball around with a group.  Then last week, when the Deadspin thing went down, I was turned on to Avoiding the Drop and realized that if I could pick a team to follow, then Euro club soccer would be a lot of fun.

My rooting background:  Lived outside Denver for a while, family moved to Florida, and I wound up in Orlando for college.  My teams are the Broncos, Rockies, Avalanche if I could be bothered to care about hockey, Magic (didn’t care about basketball when I lived out west) and I am exclusively loyal to UCF in college sports.   I don’t have much of a tortured history, although UCF is permanently on the verge of being good at football and even basketball, but never breaks through with that signature finish.  I’m particularly anti-bandwagon, as I’m surrounded by Gator “fans” who have never set foot on that wretched campus.

I usually like teams that do things “the right way,” don’t like dirty play or floppers.  I’m not looking for misery in this either.  So here’s the early look:

Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool: Out.  Too easy, too obvious, and their supporters are generally incapable of walking in a straight line when visiting our theme parks which is just annoying (especially Man U, what is the deal there?).  Too bandwagon for my tastes.

Everton, Aston Villa, Fulham – early favorites as I’m fascinated by all the concurrent tournaments that unfold, and since they’re in the Europa cup that’s more to follow along with.  They also seem to each have quirks, which is cool.

Other teams that have my interest are Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City, Blackburn Rovers- all seem at least competitive and interesting.

The others- certainly open to hearing reasons to follow them.

Two examples of how other people picked their teams:

Bill Simmons

Magnakai Haaskivi (Avoiding the Drop)

More to come as I do more homework and keep an ear out for your input.  Comments welcome, in the unlikely event that someone actually sees this.  I’ll keep this blog going for at least as long as it entertains me…