SB Nation has a cool series right now: each of our team sites discussing the origins of fandom. I wanted to share a few of the best from our college team blogs, though there are many other good ones. (To join in and enter a contest, find your school's blog.)

College fandom often goes deeper than the pro kind, whether due to regional history or alumni status or family ties, and a lot of these stories stand out as pretty unique.

Like becoming a Texas fan because your mom was into Russell Crowe's rock band:

Mom decided to visit Austin in 2001 to see TOFOG and reconnect with a friend from graduate school. I was looking at a handful of schools at that time — Montana, Montana State, CU-Boulder, a liberal arts college in Minneapolis, and Indiana as a backup. I wasn’t really sold on any of them and basically eliminated the school in Minnesota because I made the smart choice of visiting it in December. Mom and her friend decided I should visit Austin, so I did in October of 2001.

Or finding UCLA by way of the New York Yankees:

In the late ‘70s, it was all about the Yanks, no matter how much you Dodger fans hated it. My guys on those Yankee teams were catcher Thurman Munson and first baseman Chris Chambliss, who kick-started the Yankee dynasty of that era with a walk-off home run in the 1976 American League Championship Series to send the Yankees to the World Series. It would be years later that I came to know that Chambliss had played his college baseball at UCLA. My next step toward the Bruins probably didn’t come until the late '80s when Troy Aikman faced off against Rodney Peete.

Or finding Penn State because the Browns pulled a Browns:

On Nov. 9, 1993, the Browns made a shocking move by releasing Bernie Kosar, a hometown hero whom every kid (and many adults) in my region idolized. He was the ultimate underdog, a slow-footed quarterback with awkward mechanics. Kosar was able to use his understanding of the game to become one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks throughout the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s. I was too heartbroken to cheer for the Browns for the remainder of the season. I followed Kosar to the Cowboys and cheered as he filled in to lead them to an NFC Championship victory by filling in for an injured Troy Aikman and took the field for the final play in Super Bowl XXVIII. I was determined not to cheer for the Browns again until Art Modell had sold the team and Bill Belichick was long gone from Cleveland and decided to pay more attention to college football and my adopted team of Penn State. Well, let’s just say my timing couldn’t have been better. As you know, the Nittany Lions went undefeated behind one of the most electrifying offenses in the history of college football, led by the likes of Kerry Collins, Ki-Jana Carter, Kyle Brady, and Bobby Engram.

Or becoming a Sooner immediately after emigrating from India:

When my family made the move from India decades ago, we first settled in the great town of Norman, Okla., where my uncle’s family who’d sponsored ours for immigration had been living. My uncle, a professor and administrator at OU through the 1980s and ‘90s, gets most of the credit for teaching me about American sports, and my two older U.S.-born cousins get the rest. Truth be told, the first football game I remember was Notre Dame taking on West Virginia. My attention was fixated on the Irish’s helmets. Forgive me, for I was only 6 and had never before seen the crazy game of football. (I will mention, however, I was a pretty damn good cricketer.) My fickle infatuation didn’t last long, and the colors of the Crimson & Cream took over. I remember my cousin, Vijay, would fill me in on all things OU daily, and I’d eat up that knowledge. About a month into my indoctrination, I knew all about Coach Switzer, the wishbone, Mookie Blaylock and the Kansas Jayhawks, who had robbed the Sooners of the 1988 basketball crown and were the epitome of evil.

Or getting the full brunt of Oklahoma State pain right up front:

On Oct. 30, 2004, I cried like the 9-year-old I was. Since the first home game I’d attended nearly a year before, I'd developed a passion for Oklahoma State. What happened on Oct. 30, 2004? Adrian Peterson happened. It was another classic Bedlam. Back and forth, and neither team could stop the other. Peterson had 249 yards on 33 carries and rattled off an 80-yard touchdown run that all of us remember. A Vernand Morency touchdown with 11 minutes left cut the second-ranked OU lead to 38-35. The momentum swung toward OSU, and it felt like if the Cowboys could just score one more time, they’d steal a Bedlam win. With 10 seconds left, OSU set up Jason Ricks for a 49-yard field goal from the left hash. Good snap. Good hold. Wide right. From our seats, I thought it went in. I went ballistic. I then looked at my dad and saw the horror on his face.

Sign up for the newsletter The Read Option A daily-ish mini-column on the college football thing of the day, with some other stuff too. Email (required) By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. Subscribe

Or becoming a Louisville fan at an even younger age:

I can't tell you when precisely I "decided" to become a Louisville fan. All I know is there are tapes of me asking which team is "the good guys" very soon after the time I learned to talk. All I know is there are videos of me in a U of L basketball uniform performing mock starting lineups at an age where psychologists say I couldn't form conscious memories. All I know is that for as long as I can recall, Cardinal sports have been something that I've cared about far more than I care about most things.

Or being literally born into fandom:

Following a discharge as a Major, this family put in roots in South Jordan, Utah, partially due to the chance to go to BYU sports. Early in the third quarter, Steve Young threw a dart to Mike Eddo for a 24-yard TD, and a Lee Johnson PAT put BYU up 42-7 against the Bowling Green Falcons. It was around this moment when I pulled my best Lee Johnson imitation — in my mother’s uterus. That’s right. My mom not only went to a football game while she was nine months pregnant, she also went into labor.

Or finding rivalry while in the middle of making your college decision:

In February of 2008, I visited the University of Oregon for the first time. By the time I completed the tour, I knew this place was special. I just felt like I was at home, especially because I am a runner, and how could I turn down a town with running at its core? On the way back up to the airport, we stopped at Oregon State for a visit. As soon as I heard they didn't offer a journalism program, I popped the trunk and pulled out my Ducks sweatshirt I’d just acquired and tossed it on while still on campus. I also visited Washington State and loved the campus. What crossed it off the list was when someone on the campus tour asked what people do for fun in Pullman. Well, they can't be honest and say drink heavily, so they pointed us to Moscow, Idaho, where I think there was a Walmart and maybe an IHOP.

(Our Washington State fans are over here.)

Or having one of those geographically disparate piles of fandoms that mark a person as being from a time, rather than a place:

I got into sports when I was 5, and I was 5 in 1995, and the Gators were great at football then. I would be up early for school every morning and started reading the sports pages of the Orlando Sentinel daily and watching SportsCenter almost as often, falling for the Gators and Atlanta Braves and Green Bay Packers and Orlando Magic because they were all prominent and potent. I was a bandwagoner, but we who are fans all are bandwagoners at least once, whether we jump on the back of the wagon, or are placed on it by parents, or amble up onto it as children who would have no use for the word “bandwagon” in the first place.

Or the greatest fandom explanation of them all: picking a lifelong allegiance just to troll your friends:

I followed the best players and tuned into whatever the prime games on ESPN and ABC were. That is until I got sick of my friend and his borderline obsession with [Iowa State QB] Seneca Wallace. I’m not embellishing when I tell you that at the peak of this love affair, he owned three Seneca Wallace jerseys and had them in a rotation. To top that, when Wallace made it to the league, my friend would trade him to whichever team he used to play me in Madden. So I did what all of us would do to their friend … I started rooting for his favorite player’s rival, just to bust his huevos. Now, I didn’t know anything about Iowa to start. I thought their jerseys were some of the cleanest in college football. But that was about it. As I started watching more intently, it didn’t take long for me to get hooked.

I was raised a fourth-generation Georgia Tech fan in Atlanta. My first sports memory is a Clemson fan roaring in my face when I was 3. The first sports thing I cared about was the Yellow Jackets' 1990 national title season. I assumed things would stay good forever, so I became a Falcons and Hawks fan too. Things didn't stay good.

I went to Kennesaw State, a little north of Atlanta but mostly rooted for Tech until KSU's 2010 announcement that we were starting an FCS team. I'd never identified with Tech's fans, because I'm not smart and because Jackets aren't used to embracing sidewalk alumni, so transferring all my emotions was easier than it sounds.

Otherwise, in my job covering college football full time since that season, I think I just root for whatever would make the most people happy at the time. Clemson winning a good title game made people pretty happy.

Tip on over to your school’s blog to share your own story.