rat

As far as brand loyalty goes, I think it makes sense the more expensive (in time/effort/money) the item in question is. Take automobiles. I have a grandfather that worked in a Ford plant for 30 years, and will never drive anything that's not Ford/Lincoln/Mercury for that reason. He thinks GMC automobiles are shoddy due not only to the corporate menality of Ford, his own time in their plants putting his time and effort into those automobiles, or the fact that he's had good experiences with them for a lifetime. It comes down to the fact that from the 60s to the 90s while he was working in that plant, Chevy would have gladly put Ford out of business, costing him a job. Add to that the fact that Ford hired him after he left the Army, providing him a chance to raise a family of eight on one income until the youngest moved out, as well as a pension to live the rest of his life off of.

I only go into that level of detail to show that the higher the involvement with the item in question, the larger the amount of money/time/pride/effort involved, the more rabidly defensive a person will be concerning said item. When it comes to cars and sports, many of the people involved in these discussions may lack the actual knowledge necessary to make any tangible discernment between the two, so rather than analyzing specifics, they go with the general "_________ sucks, ________ rules."

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