When it comes to sports, there are four types of people:
1) Those who play and watch
2) Those who neither play nor watch
3) Those who play, but don’t watch
4) Those who watch, but don’t play
I consider only one of these types of people to be rational, namely those behind door number three: They play sports, but do not waste time watching them.
Lamentably, though, I am not rational. I fall under category 1: I enjoy both playing and watching sports. Granted, the older I get, the participant:spectator ratio skews ever more sofaward.
Let me explain why I watch even though I consider doing so irrational:
I don’t know.
Specifically, the sport I watch is football and the team I follow is the Green Bay Packers. But why? Why the Packers? If somebody asks me this, I tell them it’s because of their storied past as well as the fact that they are based in the smallest city in the NFL and have no Scrooge McDuckesque owner (they are owned by the community).
But the real answer is: I don’t know. “Choosing” a team is like falling in love: You don’t select who you’re going to become romantically entangled with by use of logic. It’s a matter of the heart, and the heart is a sneaky and inscrutable hunter. It does not deign to consult your brain on the matter.
A bigger question is, Why do I care, anyway? Why does anybody care whether a particular team does well or not? Do I know any of the players on the Packers? No.
The reason can’t be that I “like” certain players on the team (even though I don’t know them), because the personnel is constantly changing—every year there is a vast turnover of players, and typically there are only one or two who have been with the team longer than a decade.
So why do I care? Why do I spend three hours every Sunday watching the game, and some time every day reading about them, and some time every week writing about them? It makes no sense at all. My brain knows that. I agree that all this is a waste of time and, to be frank, a bit silly.
Some people do not have the sports gene at all, or at least not the inner “something” that moves them to make an emotional investment in a team. I can tell they think those of us who do are a bit touched. And I concur with them: spending time watching, reading, and writing about a bunch of guys that don’t know me from Adam Sandler is downright daffy.
Yet I still do watch, read, and write. My heart, that tricky muscle, rebels when I try to cross it. But maybe the glorious day will arrive when I come to my senses and break free from this inexplicable folly.
I doubt it will be anytime soon, though.