Sports

"Americans, myself emphatically included, are prone to forget that sports are only serious in a funny way. Part of the fun of having flaming passions about our favorite teams--the fun of being a 'fan,' short for fanatic--is the comic lack of proportion in it."--George F. Will, "The Fan's Funny Sort of Seriousness" (1974)

-----

As George Will noted almost 40 years ago, sports provide a funny sort of seriousness.  This November 30 I watched the Alabama-Auburn football game, which spectacularly concluded with a 109 yard touchdown run following a missed field goal.  Auburn won the game, the fans spilled onto the field, and I was clapping excitedly from several thousand miles away.  Why?  Not because I particularly like Auburn; indeed, I still think they played dirty in their bowl game against Northwestern several seasons ago.  But I like Alabama--college football's Goliath these last several seasons--even less. 

And besides that, we'll never see an ending to a college football game like that ever again.

But...yeah. So what?  We're talking about heavily padded men moving a leather ball back and forth across a field, probably causing each other brain damage along the way.  The only objective is to score points, but around that objective a welter of emotions emerge.  Viewed logically, this is the very height of absurdity.  But life is rarely logical. As the game is drawing to a close and the victory could go either way, it seems like the most important thing in the world.

Example 1 of this funny seriousness: when I was in eighth grade the Ohio State Buckeyes and Michigan Wolverines were among the best college basketball teams in the nation.  My beloved Bucks beat Michigan twice in the regular season, with very close games both times.  But when March Madness arrived, the third time was not the charm and Michigan prevailed.  Watching in the suburbs of Columbus, I was devastated.

Example 2 of this funny seriousness: In 2010 the San Francisco Giants beat the Texas Rangers in the World Series.  That's Texas, a team which George W. Bush once partially owned.  I watched the clinching innings at the Commonwealth, a pub in Oakland near Samuel Merritt.  From that vantage point it was clear that this Series symbolized a clash between "red" and "blue" America, as I've noted before.  When the Giants prevailed, the victory was sweeter than it would have been over most other teams.

Hmm...that second example of funny seriousness seems more seriously serious. Yes: the bare facts of sporting events themselves, what is literally at stake during the games, are indeed absurd.  But it's never the literal that counts, it's always the symbolic.  And this is why sports matter.