House of Eratosthenes

Stopped for a bite to eat in a sports bar that is within walking distance, so I could have a couple of glasses of Guinness. There was some kind of game on today. I noticed something about the fans I had not previously noticed about football fans: The moments of disappointment are every bit as important to the spectator pastime as the moments of jubilation.

Spectator pastime; there is my problem. I’ve never gotten pleasure from watching other people do things. From what I observe of it, this spectator activity causes these outbursts of extraordinary emotional spike, and some of the pleasure has to do with sharing the emotions with others. I’ve never managed to get into that, ever. And this is something I’ve been noticing for a long time…a very long time…

But regarding today’s epiphany, that the moments of letdown are every bit as important to the watching-experience as the moments of triumph. The more I think on it, the more confused I become. Let’s go over the common elements, shall we? Some crucial maneuver is being engaged by a “player”; the player is a complete stranger to the spectator, who has no control over the player, none at all. The player is executing this maneuver in order to make some progress toward winning the game, which is an objective of extreme importance to the spectator. Maybe he’s made a wager. Or maybe he just feels like he has. So he, and the player, labor under a common interest in the outcome.

The player biffs it…which causes a predictable surge of unhappy adrenaline in the spectator. What a clod! Damn him! And the spectator has to wonder, audibly, if the player has his head and his ass in the game, if the player cares about how things turn out. Or if the player isn’t just a complete dummy.

This is the source of my freshly found confusion — why do you want this? Why would you seek this out? Especially during tax season? Doesn’t real life offer more occasion for this than you could ever possibly want? The HR department of your employer. California state legislature. The IRS. President Obama. The meter maid. All these people have power over you, in that their decisions directly impact the outcome of things that you can’t control, but that definitely control you. And they all give us reason to wonder where their heads are. Whether they care, whether they’re idiots, whether they’re really on our side…

Football fans seem to be driven by a constant frenzied hunger, starved out of their minds, for something I get to “enjoy” in a greater abundance than any sane man could possibly want: The frustration of holding a stake in something that is being managed by someone failing to keep your confidence. What is it with that? Are they not put in this situation in their everyday lives? Or is it one of those things that, the more you get of it, the more you want? Kind of a weird, Stockholm-syndrome masochist whip-me-beat-me-make-me-write-bad-checks thing?

I share your disgust and confusion about football. It’s something I simply don’t understand the appeal of.

Most of my colleagues, however, are rabid football fans, and even have their own fantasy league going on in the office. During the games, there often runs a commercial showing people getting upset and frustrated by the way their fantasy leagues turned out this season, and of course, offering them some kind of gimmick allowing them to continue on with this daydream of running a football team. (I can tell you that MY fantasies have absolutely nothing to do with football…but never mind.)

I think you’re on to something, something I had not quite noticed, but now that you’ve pointed it out to me, it is profound. Why *do* people voluntarily expose themselves to (and thereby place a stake in) some sporting contest on TV that they have absolutely no control over? I’ve noticed that not only are these people all angry and pissed-off when their team loses, they’re absolutely jubilant when their team wins! They go around saying, “WE beat them. MY GUYS won. It was a glorious victory for US.” As if these fans had anything whatever to do with the outcome of the game; as if they were one of the guys on the field, or one of the dudes on the sidelines wearing the radio headset and calling the plays…instead of some guy watching the game from the stands, or on a TV at the corner bar. Why not get jubilant over some triumph that you yourself actually did, or actually contributed to?
- cylarz | 01/02/2012 @ 03:42
I would rather play than watch sports, however, my playing days are over. I still casually follow some sports but one of the habits of rabid fans that has always annoyed me is the linking of themselves to the team. “We had a great win last night!” No you didn’t. You were sitting on your arse sucking down beer last night. The other side of the coin is the celebrity “news” shows that women follow. Is Jennifer pregnant ? Have Ashton and Demi split? Anything to avoid thinking about where we are and where we are headed. A little escape once in a while is fine, but to be totally uninvolved in what’s going on around you, except to trot off to the voting booth every few years to cast your totally uninformed ballot is one of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in. Get a life and get involved.
- groman | 01/02/2012 @ 05:08
I’m not a huge sports fan, either.
It’s not a case of ADD; I just can’t cough up 3+ hours to watch a game. I did watch the Army-Navy game with my newborn son, but that’s for auld lang syne.
Too, the NFL seems to have gone WWF. Watching 75 minutes of time crammed into 3+ hours of prima donna prancing about? Life is too short for such.
- smitty1e | 01/02/2012 @ 07:28
The answer is tribes, Morgan. That ain’t TOO hard to figger out. That said, I don’t watch football on Sundays… but Saturdays in the Fall are day-long orgies of gridiron combat. As is most of Bowl Week.

The next thang you’re gonna tell me is ya don’t “get” hockey, either. Don’t go there. 😉
- bpenni | 01/02/2012 @ 10:04
– groman | 01/02/2012 @ 05:08

Great post. Well said.
- cylarz | 01/02/2012 @ 14:33

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DJEver Notice? LXIXMonday, January 2nd, 2012

DJEver Notice? LXIX
Monday, January 2nd, 2012