i imagine its hard for you - the OP- to put in the due dilligence necessary for thorough sports research since you dont seem to like sports.

tell the KC chief fans, seattle seahawk fans, LSU tiger fans in football that they're not part of whats goin on there. better do it when their teams are on offense- otherwise they wont be able to fukkin hear you because those stadiums are so loud.

the local fanbase IS part of the team and does pay for the facilities and player salaries etc etc. teams are embarrassed to to play for empty stadiums. fans do help with morale, preventing audibles, etc and sometimes even decision making ("tebow, tebow, tebow!!!!" the crowd chanted to orton's mistakes) but more importantly...each team has a city assigned to them:

they are not "the cool guy lions" or something like that- they're the Detroit Lions, representing detroit. why shouldnt people in detroit be able to claim them. they are playing for their city.