Sports allegiances are rigid.

This is nothing new. But in a university setting where ideas of “change” are emphasized across disciplines, the intractable nature of fandom is an aberration.

What’s more: these loyalties are, for the most part, dictated. There’s a remarkable lack of autonomy. Most avid sports fans grow up rooting for a particular team in a specific sport, and while they can identify why they follow that club—“my father’s father’s father had season tickets,” etc.—it’s hard to pick out a specific moment when they decided to become partisan to that squad.

It’s often not a choice, and it’s predominantly zero-sum. From just about the moment I was born, my aunt and my grandfather wrestled for my allegiances. She backed the Yankees, Knicks and Giants; he followed the Mets, Nets and Jets. They knew that within each sport, only one team could reign supreme. At some point—well before my first memories—my grandfather conceded on all fronts. The “decision” was reflected immediately: my baby pictures feature a striking number of pinstripes. Seven championships later, I don’t fault the choice, but my role in it was decisively minimal.

We’re born this way (hat tip: Gaga) and little can change that. There are always exceptions to the rule—discovering a new sport later in life, for instance. The most predominant one is, at the relatively old age of 18, pledging loyalty to your university’s athletics teams. At Stanford, just days after matriculation, the new freshman class is taken to its first football game. It’s one of the best environments of the year—thousands of newly initiated Cardinal devotees get their first Stanford sports experience. And it’s memorable, to say the least: days after the 2007 NSO game, I would meet one of my now-close friends by approaching him and (awkwardly, I assure you) saying, “You were one of those dudes with an ‘S’ on your chest in the front row. Awesome.” It didn’t matter that Oregon outscored us 31-0 in the second half during the actual contest, because the game was the beginning of a collective bond over Cardinal athletics.

There’s just one problem. Many of us come to the Farm with existing allegiances to other big collegiate programs. This may not be as much of an issue for our friends at liberal arts schools playing at the Division III level, but what happens when the team you grew up supporting plays the school you’re currently attending? This can be a particularly unappealing issue at Stanford. Most of the student body did not grow up as Cardinal diehards. A significant portion of undergraduates comes from the Los Angeles area, which can often mean loyalties to UCLA or, more often, USC. We count among us fans of schools from all the major conferences, and with 35 Stanford teams playing games across the country, it is inevitable that loyalties will be tested.

My childhood school was/is Michigan. Shawn Crable’s personal foul on Troy Smith (look it up) is still, regrettably, seared into my memory. Charles Woodson, Steve Breaston and LaMarr Woodley were my childhood heroes, not Troy Walters or Tank Williams. Fortunately, Michigan and Stanford rarely compete. The Cardinal and the Wolverines have butted heads this year, for example, in women’s water polo and gymnastics, and will go at it in baseball in March, but other contests are few and far between.

But that doesn’t end the question—who do you choose?—and it manifested itself differently last month. Both Michigan and Stanford were competing for Jim Harbaugh’s services; if he left for Ann Arbor, how would I feel? I never hashed out a good answer and, fortunately, didn’t need to. But, my example aside, competing college sports allegiances are difficult (if not unknown) territory for the average fan. Athletics loyalties are not malleable, so how do you reconcile? There isn’t a one-size-fits-all response. I know that my dedication to Michigan has waned over my four years at Stanford; if they met in the BCS title game, I’d be pulling—hard—for the Cardinal. At the same time, I have friends who grew up as Stanford fans, only to attend other Pac-10 schools and refuse to change their rooting interests. There’s a broad spectrum of answers.

Ultimately, it’s hard to judge. Unless their team owner is Dan Snyder, fans of professional sports franchises who switch teams or pick up a second squad later in life (that they feel equally passionate about) will always raise eyebrows. But the motivations at the collegiate level are easier to calibrate, and, roundabout as it may seem, that makes it more difficult to act definitively one way or another.

Unless you grew up a Golden Bear. Then you have to choose.

Wyndam Makowsky counts the Giants’ win in Super Bowl XXV as one of “his” championships. Find out how much one-year-old Wyndam knew about that team at makowsky “at” stanford.edu.