Several lawmakers said their personal experiences contributed to proposing legislation that would make it harder for sports teams to leave a city and go elsewhere:

He doesn’t even really root for the Chicago Bears, but U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders says he wants to ensure Bears fans — and sports fans of all stripes — are protected from the heartbreak he suffered as a teenager, when his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers left for Los Angeles.

Sanders, the independent Vermont senator and two-time presidential candidate, threw his support behind long-shot legislation Thursday that would give communities a chance to keep their professional sports teams if their owners threatened to leave. Under the proposal, local leaders would have a year to find another buyer for the sports team or to organize a community ownership structure, like that used by the Green Bay Packers, to take over the team instead…

The penalties under the new proposal would apply if team owners relocate their home facility across state lines or out of metropolitan areas.

“Professional football is America’s religion,” Sanders said, when touting the need to promote activities like professional sports that bring people of different backgrounds together…

The impact of those moves can linger for generations, the lawmakers said. Casar talked about the loss he felt when the Houston Oilers left the city for Nashville in 1996.

Three things stick out to me from this overview:

1. Childhood commitments to teams stick with people. Jerry Reinsdorf has also discussed how the move of the Dodgers to LA affected him. Plenty of Americans have experienced this, including lots of kids.
2. The moving across state lines strikes me as not the same thing as moving out of metropolitan regions. I know it involves different bodies of government but the metro area is the more important factor here for fans. If the Bears end up in Indiana and the Chiefs are in Missouri, fans have not lost a team.
3. Sanders suggests football is religion and he is right in certain ways: it prompts vast followings, fans come together across different backgrounds, stadiums are sacred spaces, the Super Bowl is a sacred event, and so on. Sports is a kind of functional religion.

It sounds like the goal of this legislation is to limit the benefits wealthy team owners can derive from playing places against each other regarding stadiums and teams. If an owner threatens to leave in order to get more taxpayer money or a better deal, this legislation gives communities other options. Whether this saves the children of America from sports heartbreak might be a secondary benefit.