I'm a little bit gleeful today, although I won't admit it around my husband. Why? The Utah Jazz are out of the playoffs. And now, although he'll still watch every game from now until San Antonio sweeps Detroit, I won't have to listen to the stream of profanity issuing from his mouth every time Williams misses a free throw or overhear angst-ridden phone calls with his brothers and his dad.
It's not like I was actually rooting against the Jazz, but I'm glad that I now have almost three full months until college football starts-- months when we'll watch things like the French Open nonstop on weekends (the roar of the crowd at Roland-Garros is so much more civilized than the rumble in an American football stadium), and see Tiger win a few more majors. We'll probably watch way too many hours of World Series of Poker. (Bowling and NASCAR seem to be the only sports he hasn't claimed as his own). He likes golf and tennis, and even loves baseball, but he's only a die-hard for BYU football and basketball and the Utah Jazz.
As I watched him suffering, kneeling on and pacing around the family room floor, remote in one hand, veins bulging in his neck, as he has watched the Jazz over the last few weeks, I've decided that I don't identify with the team sports mentality. I totally get things like swimming and biking and running-- where you don't necessarily have to come in first to feel good about your performance, with personal best times and stuff like that. I've never won a running race (or even a swimming event in four years of high school, for that matter) but I had personal best times a lot of times. You push yourself, and then push some more. The person in the next lane is almost irrelevant.
But in team sports, the whole ship sinks together. And 98% of the time, your team's ship will sink before the season ends. Think about basketball-- how many Division 1 Men's Teams are there? Hundreds, right? And only two, the winners of the NIT and NCAA tournaments, end the season as winners. Fans of every other team inevitably end up yelling at the television screen and shutting it off in frustration. The odds are slightly better in professional basketball, but not much. And they're markedly better with college football, due to the lack of a playoff tournament, but still, at least half the time you're rooting for a losing team.
My husband is a smart guy-- probably the smartest guy I know. He's the man whose hand I would want guiding tubes up to my heart if I thought I were dying, and he knows almost every obscure sports fact (I'm pretty sure he could even stump the Schwab), but I just can't get through his thick skull the irrationality of being a team sports fan.
--originally published 5/31/07
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