I’ve promised to write three pithy, witty, brilliant blog posts over three days, none more than 300 words. Yesterday, I proved once and for all that there is no such thing as intelligent design. Today, I prove that spectator sports are bad for you. Tomorrow, I write 300 unrelated profanities having no relation to one another.
WATCHING SPORTS IS BAD FOR YOU, OR AT LEAST ME
I thought I had seen it all, after being a Cubs fan these many years. After all, the Cubs have choked in the most bizarre, unimaginable ways ever seen on a diamond.
Then I watched the NCAA men’s basketball championship a few weeks ago, which featured my Memphis Tigers against the Kansas Jayhawks.
With a couple of minutes left, Memphis had a nine-point lead, but lost in historic, operatic fashion, a choke for the ages. This led to the following behaviors on my part:
1. Anger of the most toxic, extreme sort.
2. Uttering profanities.
3. Slamming the remote against the comfy chair in which I sat, uttering profanities.
4. Kicking the ottoman, uttering profanities.
I became, in short, a raving lunatic, like those you seen restrained in straitjackets or yelling incomprehensible profanities on your local street corner.
If the game had been close and Memphis lost, it would have been heartbreaking. If they had been blown out, that’s just the nature of the beast. But to be this goddamn close to victory only to have it snatched away…well, a circumstance such as that demands a brief descent into insanity.
Watching sports is not supposed to do this. It is supposed to be a form of fantasy, escapism. But I sweat bullets for the entire game, never felt comfortable, and by the end, resembled a brain-eating zombie from George Romero film.
In short, if sports are a respite from the quotidian woes of a depraved world, why are sports fans generally such a miserable, complaining, depressed lot? Your team might win a lot of games, or even most of them, but nearly always, your team will not win the championship and your season ends in disappointment. You don’t even have to be a Cubs fan to understand this.
Thus, hundreds of hours spent watching television, reading box scores, following the torrent of opinions online — wasted.
And the reason we watch sports, is?
This is the reason some of us don’t watch sports. It’s too scarey for children and dogs.
I think this post further proves your theory of evolution. Surely members of an intelligently designed species wouldn’t act like apes during a sporting event.
I think your “sports are toxic” problem is easily solved. You just have to recognize that swearing is a healthy detoxification of anger. The sports are bad, yes; but swearing and swearing well? That’s an ART.
Gods, I need to read before hitting submit. That was supposed to
say “swearing is toxic.” Can’t help with the sports are toxic except agree!
I live in Cleveland – ’nuff said.
“And the reason we watch sports, is?”
Cue Grace Slick:
Go ask Baron Von Masoch
When the Tigers leave you feeling small
Dontchoo be fucking with my Jayhawks. I was there twenty years
ago; I waas there the other night. We SMOKED Memphis, came
about when it needed doing.
Orange Bowl.
NCAA Championship.
Um, James Naismith, anyone?
World, Kansas is on the fucking MAP.
Sorry, but you’re the first Memphis fan I’ve met so I had to rub it
in a little. I’m really not like this. Really.
When are you going to post more about Joshua Bell?