Psychologist types like to conclude that Americans like underdogs, a thesis easily supportable by every sports movie ever made. Though when it comes to team sports, Americans mostly select teams based on regionalism.
Tanzanian sports don't work on either principle. Football, by which I mean that sport which Americans call soccer, is a national pastime. The most important teams to follow, however, aren't the African teams, but the Premier League teams in England. It is harder in the markets to find a Tanzanian football jersey than a Chelsea jersey. There are some football clubs that play against one another in Tanzania, and I should probably know more about them than I do, given that one of the country's nicer stadiums is here in Morogoro, but all I know is that the teams people talk about playing one another are Simba and Yanga. People root for whichever one has been winning recently. Likewise the Premier League teams. The team to support is the team that wins, not the one that struggles against overwhelming odds. A friend of mine has a good hypothesis, with which I agree, that in a land traditionally seriously oppressed and currently struggling with poverty and a lack of infrastructure and a place in world news that can be summed up as "wartorn poverty-stricken AIDS-riddled" (because reporting with any nuance or lack of sensationalism would be, like, work) people want to identify with the powerful and successful because, well, power and success are good, and when you don't have it, you want it. Naturally.
This would explain why people not in England care about English football clubs, which I admit that, as an American, I find almost incomprehensible. It might also explain why the majority of Tanzanians identify as either Christian or Muslim, despite being introduced to both religions when the Muslims were selling them to the Christians as slaves, which would seem to a be a great reason for embracing neither.
Even in America, outside the demographic of people who answer surveys, there do seem to be some instances, of people living below the poverty line selecting sports teams outside the American norm of regionalism. And by some instances, I mean I know of one instance as a friend of mine told me that in West Baltimore on the matter of baseball, a lot of people support the Yankees rather than the Orioles, and the Yankees do represent a lot more winningness than the Orioles.
Thoughts, friends?
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