Sports Built My Personality (and I Finally Built a Quiz to Explain It)
I have been thinking about how sports absolutely shaped my personality. I didn’t choose them so much as they imprinted on me like a baby duck with a remote control. My stepdad once asked me when I was about five or six, “What’s your favorite team?” I didn’t have one. I barely knew the rules of anything. I was still learning how socks worked.
So I made the reasonable decision any five-year-old would make:
I picked the team with the coolest logo.
Early-80s Broncos helmet. Big orange D. Angry horse busting out like it had bills to pay and hooves to throw. I saw that thing and thought, yes, that’s my destiny. That’s my Roman Empire.
And so I became a Denver Broncos fan—one of the most character-building decisions of my small human life. Not the best team, not the worst team, but absolutely the most emotionally educational. John Elway. Terrell Davis. Shannon Sharpe. The Three Amigos. Karl Mecklenburg. Karlis, the Barefoot Kicker, whose entire aesthetic was “I dare you to question me.”
And they waited until I graduated high school to finally win a Super Bowl while I was alive.
If you want to understand resilience, choose a team who makes you earn joy.
Sports Were Basically My First Theology Class
I learned resilience from the Broncos.
I learned heartbreak from the Broncos.
I learned hope, momentum, delusion, and the fine art of emotional recovery from—
you guessed it—the Broncos.
Same thing happened in soccer. I was a massive Roberto Baggio fan during the 1994 World Cup. Italy made it all the way to the final. And then Baggio—my tiny Italian hero with the spiritual ponytail—sent his penalty kick up and over the crossbar. I’m pretty sure it’s still orbiting Earth.
I was at church camp at the time, learning about Jesus and forgiveness, but I could not recover spiritually from that PK. The counselors talked about grace; I was grieving like my little sports heart had been mugged.
Looking back, it makes perfect sense: kids model themselves after the world they’re watching.
Some kids looked up to astronauts or presidents.
I looked up to athletes doing impossible things on TV and thought, I want to matter like that.
You Can Tell a Lot About Someone from Their Sports Fandom
Here in Oklahoma, for example, there are two types of Dallas Cowboys fans:
The Bandwagon Believers – spiritually buoyant, always hopeful, occasionally loud.
The Lifers – the ones who talk about the Cowboys like they’re still living in the 90s, fully committed to a past only they can see.
I don’t especially care for either group, but one is more tolerable than the other. (You know which. I don’t have to say it.)
Point is: people reveal themselves through the teams they love.
Your fandom is a personality test you didn’t realize you were taking.
Winter Is My Sports Survival Season
When seasonal depression tries to set up a lease in my body, winter sports become my coping mechanism. NFL, college football, NBA, Duke Blue Devils, OKC Thunder, and whatever hockey knowledge I’ve collected in the past few years—I consume it all like a space heater for the soul.
Sports help me mark time.
Sports help me stay hopeful.
Sports help me get through the weird, heavy months.
Some people use light therapy.
I use sports schedules.
The Mythology Idea: What If Champions Born in Your Birth Year Actually Shape You?
Then I started thinking—half seriously, half unhinged—about astrology, numerology, palm reading, all the sacred sciences of “maybe this means something.”
I looked up the champions from 1978, the year I was born.
And guess what?
The Broncos LOST the Super Bowl that year to the Dallas Cowboys.
The team I like least.
I should have taken that as a warning label.
But instead, a thought popped into my head:
What if the champions the year you were born leave a mark on you?
Like a sports zodiac sign.
A Championship Sign.
Ridiculous idea? Absolutely.
Funny idea? Also yes.
Potentially meaningful in ways that hurt your feelings? Shockingly yes.
So I Built a Championship Sign Quiz
Me and GPT went through 75 years of champions — NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB — from 1950 to 2025. If you’re old enough to type, or young enough to swipe, this quiz can read you.
You enter your:
Birth year
Birth month
Favorite sport
And the quiz blends all of that with the champions from your year to assign you one of seven archetypes.
It’s not science — it’s sports mythology.
But here’s the wild thing:
It keeps landing eerily close to the truth.
Mine was accurate.
My friends’ were accurate.
Some of you will get read for filth by a championship from 1973, and frankly, you deserve it.
Are you a Dynasty?
Are you a Cinderella?
Are you a Heartbreaker?
Are you Chaos Incarnate?
Find out. Roast me if I’m wrong.
Take the Quiz & Tell Me If We Nailed You
If astrology has ever failed you, numerology confused you, or the Enneagram offended you, let sports take a crack at your identity.
Take the Championship Sign Quiz:
👉 www.mggovia.com/championship-sign
Tell me if it nailed you.
Tell me if it hurt your feelings.
Tell me if I owe you an apology on behalf of the 1980 Phillies.
I can’t promise accuracy.
But I can promise personality.
And honestly?
That’s what sports gave me in the first place.
