I have a good time making fun of sports fanatics, but the truth of the matter is that I’m jealous of them. My best guess is that the devotees use the games, the scores, the stats and the scandals for camaraderie and as a ladder to climb out of their own lives and snuggle into a narrative that couldn’t be more foreign to their own. For years I relied on a 12 pack to accomplish the same thing, more or less, but since I threw that broken crutch into a landfill, I’m kind of lost.
I envy the all-consuming zeal that’s in the blood, evidently, of the sports fans. The problem is that I cannot stop laughing at them. Speaking of jokes, bad ones, the fact that Tiger Woods’ marital issues constitutes international news would be entertaining were it not so lame. Seriously, a golfer supposedly cheats on his wife, rams the car – an SUV, of course – into a fire hydrant, posts some remarks on his Web site then doesn’t show up at his own golf tournament and all hell breaks loose. As best I can tell, the main problem people are having is that they feel let down by Tiger because he is not the wholesome family guy they believed him to be. Worse yet, his shenanigans are a huge disappointment to the youngsters, who look up to him as a role model. Other than the fact that the advertising dictators have ordered us to do so, why would anyone ever “look up to” any athlete, professional or otherwise? Are we so desperate that we look up to a guy who makes hundreds of millions of dollars because the product pimps like the fact that he knows how to slam a ball across a landscape poisoned by chemicals in order to look pretty? Yes, indeed, we are.
Closer to home, we’ve been very busy in Oregon recently getting ready for last night’s big game: the Civil War. Oregon State, the Beavs, took on the University of Oregon, the Ducks. I don’t understand football protocols, but for some reason the winner of the game goes to the Rose Bowl. For those of you who are not in Oregon, it’s been very, very serious. So much so, in fact, that the presidents of the two cash-strapped universities set their differences aside and got together to make a video reminding everyone that even though some of us are Ducks, and some of us are Beavers, we’re all Oregonians. “With so much pressure riding on this game, emotions are running high,” a reporter said yesterday, live from the stadium where tailgaters were already arriving. Then the reporter put a plastic duck toy in her mouth and made it quack before quickly apologizing for not giving the Beavers equal time, although nobody on the news could decide what sort of noise a Beaver noisemaker would make. Not to be outdone, the traffic reporter, dressed in green – “My dad was a duck!” she said – reported that already the roads to Eugene were experiencing delays. Around noon yesterday, I went grocery shopping with a friend of mine, a Beav, and saw several cars festooned for the big game. It was kind of festive, in an odd way. All laughs aside, though, there is a sobering aspect to this year’s Civil War. Early this week, the Ducks announced the will be wearing helmets with special stickers on them in a show of support for the troops, some of whom will watch the game from Iraq. We want to honor the men and women serving our country, one of the players explained, so sweetly, so sincerely that even I couldn’t muster a good laugh.
I envy the all-consuming zeal that’s in the blood, evidently, of the sports fans. The problem is that I cannot stop laughing at them. Speaking of jokes, bad ones, the fact that Tiger Woods’ marital issues constitutes international news would be entertaining were it not so lame. Seriously, a golfer supposedly cheats on his wife, rams the car – an SUV, of course – into a fire hydrant, posts some remarks on his Web site then doesn’t show up at his own golf tournament and all hell breaks loose. As best I can tell, the main problem people are having is that they feel let down by Tiger because he is not the wholesome family guy they believed him to be. Worse yet, his shenanigans are a huge disappointment to the youngsters, who look up to him as a role model. Other than the fact that the advertising dictators have ordered us to do so, why would anyone ever “look up to” any athlete, professional or otherwise? Are we so desperate that we look up to a guy who makes hundreds of millions of dollars because the product pimps like the fact that he knows how to slam a ball across a landscape poisoned by chemicals in order to look pretty? Yes, indeed, we are.
Closer to home, we’ve been very busy in Oregon recently getting ready for last night’s big game: the Civil War. Oregon State, the Beavs, took on the University of Oregon, the Ducks. I don’t understand football protocols, but for some reason the winner of the game goes to the Rose Bowl. For those of you who are not in Oregon, it’s been very, very serious. So much so, in fact, that the presidents of the two cash-strapped universities set their differences aside and got together to make a video reminding everyone that even though some of us are Ducks, and some of us are Beavers, we’re all Oregonians. “With so much pressure riding on this game, emotions are running high,” a reporter said yesterday, live from the stadium where tailgaters were already arriving. Then the reporter put a plastic duck toy in her mouth and made it quack before quickly apologizing for not giving the Beavers equal time, although nobody on the news could decide what sort of noise a Beaver noisemaker would make. Not to be outdone, the traffic reporter, dressed in green – “My dad was a duck!” she said – reported that already the roads to Eugene were experiencing delays. Around noon yesterday, I went grocery shopping with a friend of mine, a Beav, and saw several cars festooned for the big game. It was kind of festive, in an odd way. All laughs aside, though, there is a sobering aspect to this year’s Civil War. Early this week, the Ducks announced the will be wearing helmets with special stickers on them in a show of support for the troops, some of whom will watch the game from Iraq. We want to honor the men and women serving our country, one of the players explained, so sweetly, so sincerely that even I couldn’t muster a good laugh.
