A person leaves town … switches states .. crosses an ocean … and eventually his sports preferences morph.

It’s one of those things that you don’t realize until you do a sort of internal check. “Which teams’ results do I follow? Which have I stopped tracking? Which teams can make me feel a little better by winning and a little worse by losing?”

This list is not remotely the same as it would have been a decade ago, and certainly not the same as it would have been four-plus years ago, before this overseas stuff really got going.

Counting backwards from 10:

10. UCLA basketball. At a time in my life, say, 1970, the Bruins would have been in the top two. This was John Wooden and the Pyramid of Success and losing about once a year. Classy, lots of character, 10 championships in 11 years — something that may never happen again. They have worn me down, though, with all these recent years of mediocrity. (And the notion that the 2008 team with Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook, Darren Collison, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Josh Shipp didn’t win the NCAA title ticks me off.) Plus, following college sports is hard, overseas.

9. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. I follow this team, but I have no emotional stake in them. Never have. Hard to explain. I’m interested, I know what they are doing, but I’m not invested. Mike Trout might be able to move this team up in my list, though.

8. Arsenal. Never been to the Emirates Stadium, in London. Not sure how many Arsenal matches I have seen from beginning to end. But I am a fan of the Gunners. I always check their scores. I read news about them closely — and we produce quite a bit of it, at The National. Despite all the Brits in the room, it contains almost no Arsenal fans. I might be the only one. (I’m not sure I know another Arsenal fan, even though they fill the stadium every week.) It’s Arsene Wenger, a class act, and the attempt the Gunners make to play attractive football, their fiscal sanity — and, of late, this thing about not having won a trophy since 2005, which tends to focus the mind on each year’s competition.

7. L.A. Galaxy. This is mostly about Landon Donovan. But not entirely. I like Bruce Arena. (I know; not supposed to, as a journalist.) And I followed them when Cobi Jones was their best player, and that’s so 20th century. I am pleased they have won consecutive championships, and I can vouch for the fact that they are the best-known Major League Soccer club, internationally. David Beckham had that impact.

6. USC football. Not as keen on these guys as I was when Pete Carroll was coach, but I still follow their scores. And we have stipulated that tracking a college team from the UAE is difficult.

5. Los Angeles Dodgers. Twenty years ago, this team would have been No. 1, but I am still angry about the Frank/Jamie McCourt Era … and the years, now, of unlikable teams have taken a toll, too. I have given myself permission to like them again, but so far I haven’t traveled very far back. The reckless spending is part of the problem. And how about a Dodger as manager? Joe Torre was bad, but Don Mattingly is worse. Maybe if I could hear Vin Scully every night, it would help … but I can’t.

4. The UAE national soccer team. I have reported on these guys from Doha, Beirut, Tashkent, London, Manchester, Coventry … I know probably 25 guys in or around the national team by their silhouette. And I would prefer they win because I think most of them are pretty good guys — and because they are the biggest thing in the UAE, and it’s always more fun to cover successful teams that are big in your circulation area.

3. Al Jazira. No, really. This is my Abu Dhabi neighborhood team. We lived three years about a quarter-mile from the stadium. They are good, they are well-run, they have the best stadium in the country, and they are on TV twice a week. I imagine that 10 years from now I will still be able to name at least half the starting lineup of the 2011 league championship team. Ricardo Oliveira, Matias Delgado, Bare, Abdullah Mousa, Ibrahim Diaky, Subait Khater, Ali Kasheif, Ali Mabkhout, Hilal Saeed, Khaled Sabeel Juma Abdullah …I think my connection to this team might be something like the tribalism of English fans and the neighborhood side.

2. U.S. national team. I will come back to this at some time in the future, I bet, but the longer I am overseas the more amazing I find it that the U.S. is a pretty good team, internationally. Dozens of countries — 50, maybe, or 100 — ought to be better, because soccer is so deeply ingrained in so many cultures — but not the U.S.  The Yanks do not have a bunch of guys playing at the elite levels of world football — Clint Dempsey (Tottenham) and Tim Howard (Everton) are about it — but the Yanks are formidable as a national side because, I believe, they play harder and they care more and they mesh better. I like that the international rep of the U.S. soccer team is: They always play hard, and they never quit. It’s meant as a sort of backhanded compliment, the unspoken part of it being: “… but they have awful technical skills and they are not very athletic”. Well, it’s true. I don’t have remotely the same level of familiarity with these guys I did four years ago (I followed them to the 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002 World Cups), and Jurgen Klinsmann now is starting guys I’ve never heard of, but I still care about this team.

1. Los Angeles Lakers. These guys always have been in my top four or five, and now they seem to win a bit by default, with the departure to St. Louis of the Rams (in 1994), this onerous Dodgers period, my renewed disconnect from the Angels, my disinterest in hockey … Kobe Bryant is really the driving force here. I know he is a flawed human being, but his utter devotion to being the best player he can be … I find that compelling. And it’s not so hard to follow the NBA over here. The recent championships don’t hurt, either, but I liked the Lakers when Jerry West and Elgin Baylor were losing to the Celtics every year in the 1960s. It would take years of them being horrible to move them out of this spot, but with Jim Buss calling the shots, it could happen.