Brand new football fan here, hence the name.
My name's Jim Schauber, and I hail from Billings, Montana. For those of you geographically unfamiliar, Montana is a large state on the US/Canadian border, famous for it's mountains, wildlife and natural beauty.
Why Fulham is a tough question, the real question I'd have to answer first is why football? I've never played the game, though both my kids have. I've never been to Europe and I've never seen a live professional game at any level. I, like alot of Americans I would suppose, limited my interest in football to the World Cup as a matter of national pride. I couldn't have named 3 players at the start of the cup and by the end was cheering for them like they were my own.
What I do watch faithfully is baseball. Specifically, Baltimore Orioles baseball. For any MLB fans out there, it's a singularly painful exercise to be a fan of the Orioles, and usually by early in the season I find myself watching them lose half heartedly while flipping through the channels to find something more interesting to watch. One day I happened across the Fox Soccer Channel and found myself riveted to the TV watching a Premier League match. I couldn't tell you who the teams were but the level of play was fantastic and there's something about watching 50,000 people cheering in unison that is inspiring. I decided to learn more about the league and find a team to root for.
I went to the League site and started sifting through the teams. The only thing I knew from the start is I had no interest in rooting for Man U. Everything about them smelled like the New York Yankees to me. Too many fans, too much money, too many titles,... After digging around without much luck I decided to look for some of the players I had followed in the World Cup. That led me to Dempsey and Fulham.
Having lurked around this and a few other boards for a while, I'm fully aware that this process won't necessarily resound well with the lifelong Fulham fan, however; it is what it is. I'm looking forward to learning more about the sport and in the process hopefully not making too big of an a$$ of myself.