New Year Blewjowski, Part II: Sports

I figure I'll be done with these postings around 2014.

This post started out as a rant in my head, about a month ago, but I've stepped away from the toxins and have felt positive since.

I am no longer a fan of sports. Any sport. You can't make me care enough to invest the kind of passion and dedication necessary to be a fan of a watching half-naked men running around doing anything.

I lost my fanity by going to various Texas Tech fan sites during the football season, and was eventually overwhelmed by the combination of negativity, ignorance and gloating pessimism. I told myself to stay away from the comments, but somehow couldn't. "Surely, there will be a voice of reason and perspective. Someone will say that there are generally good people working here with good intentions."

And I'd read a 2,000-word rant saying that Tommy Tubberville is the devil and Kent Hance is Saddam Hussein and they all need to die. And he'd laugh at the funeral and make a pass at the widows.

Sucked the good right out of the season. The games sucked. The fans sucked. The future seemed to suck.*

And I had my epiphany: The hype machine is destroying sports, putting it on the same level of religion. Yes, religion -- have you seen some of the NFL promotions lately? The slow motion, fuzzy shots of people overreacting to a play. Treating people who dress up like fools as anything other than fools. From the promotions, it's hard to tell if Madden Football is a video game or a really special youth outreach project.

And then the self-seriousness of so many fans, preaching the gospel of why I really, really should hate Oregon.

My advice to self: Don't confuse the fun and fascinating with the morally vital. It's a game. It's always a game.

I have since tuned out the fan sites. I read about Tech in the newspaper, follow a bit of ESPN, which is a lot of fun to monitor since I stopped calling them the evil empire. And I can say without much doubt I get a lot more enjoyment out of my teams than most of you.

*Which makes me wonder why the entire state of Oklahoma hasn't lobotomized itself.