I agree it doesn't work that way now, the strongest team identities are at the party level, overlooking that the US government was designed to balance different

I agree it doesn't work that way now, the strongest team identities are at the party level, overlooking that the US government was designed to balance different team identities: legislative vs executive vs judicial, federal (national) vs state, geographic territory vs population density. The football team may not share common goals. The offense may care about scoring lots of points because each player wants to get a higher salary in their upcoming contract negotiations. The owner may only care about offense because it gets more viewers and more lucrative TV contracts. I believe if we started rooting for Congress instead of rooting for one party (or one legislator), we might solve more collective problems. Personally, I don't care about the Republican or Democratic parties, I care if Congress solve problems. I want the American team to win not the political party, and I'm willing to guess that there are many more citizens who think like this than it appears.