I've always liked that line, and honestly, it helps you stay sane when your football team has fallen from great heights, or your NFL team is the worst in the league, or your beloved provincial rugby team slips back into old habits.
My sporting allegiances have been formed for an eclectic series of reasons.
North Otago rugby became one of my great passions because of simple geography - I was born in Oamaru (so was Richie McCaw!) and raised on a farm just 10km inland. In fact, I still struggle with the concept of calling Dunedin home.
I've been a New York Knicks basketball fan since I was a teenager, simply because I used to play as the Knicks (Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley) on the NBA Jam video game at our local fish and chip shop.
In rugby league, I follow the Penrith Panthers (because I first started watching the NRL the year Royce Simmons scored two tries in the grand final) and Queensland (because of King Wally Lewis, basically).
I like baseball and I've been a long-time Boston Red Sox supporter simply because I read a lot of Stephen King books when I was younger. King is a huge Red Sox fan and mentioned them constantly.
Continuing the American sports theme, I started following the NFL in the late 1990s and became a St Louis Rams fan because of the amazing story of Kurt Warner, who was plucked from a grocery story to be the quarterback on a team that won the Super Bowl. The Rams are now truly appalling but I'm stuck with them.
And then there is Liverpool.
They say your first is always the best and Liverpool was (is) my first great sporting love.
I was a Liverpool fan before I was a reporter, a husband and a father. I was a Liverpool fan before the internet and before Outrageous Fortune.
I can't recall a time when I WASN'T a Liverpool fan. It happened so early I can't actually remember HOW it happened.
I remember the 1986 World Cup and buying Shoot magazine and wondering how that midget from Argentina got away with cheating.
But I honestly can't recall the moment, the game or the player that sealed my lifelong allegiance to the great Liverpool Football Club. Was it Ian Rush? Steve McMahon? John Barnes?
Was it the sight of Anfield and the sound of the greatest anthem in world sport?
Or was it simply that Liverpool were successful and were the club most often seen on New Zealand television?
It's not something I think about that often. For better or worse, I'm a Red. Liverpool is my team and always will be.
(I'll break in here to suggest you read this column by American sports and pop culture writer Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy. It's an entertaining yarn about choosing a Premier League team from scratch, even if Simmons did make the mistake of choosing Tottenham, and bizarrely referred to them as "The Spurs".)
At the moment, it's not much fun being a Liverpool fan. The Reds haven't won the league in 20 years, they're shaping to finish seventh (!!) this season and I've been mocked for the last eight months by the Manchester United-loving online colleague and the Arsenal-loving arts colleague.
But a certain calm defeatism overtakes you in this situation.
Knocked out of the FA Cup? Well, there's always next year.
Competing for some tinpot second-tier European trophy? Them's the breaks.
Seventh? Time to go watch the Highlanders.
Stevie G and Fernando T set to bolt? Go the Penny Panthers!
The optimism will return in fits and starts, when Liverpool pulls off a good win thanks to a cracking goal or two from the great god Torres.
I love that about sport. Those who fall can rise again. Hold on to that thought, Highlanders fans.
