It's been a big "sports week" here in the Twin Towns. In the longest college football rivalry in the nation, the Gophers battled the Badgers at home to determine who would win "The Ax." On Sunday we had the Twin Cities Marathon and TC 10 Mile. Then the Brett Favre version of the Vikings took on the Packers in Monday Night Football. And today, right now, the Twins are facing the Tigers in a winner-take-all one-game divisional playoff.
Yes, it's all sort of exciting. And I remember a time in a distant past life (read: junior high school) when my career goal was to become a sportscaster. But at some point (read: late in high school) I realized that there had to be more to life than three-run homers, screen passes, and slap shots. Although sports can be a nice diversion, they are, in the end, just games. And as more than 50,000 Americans were dying in Vietnam, it became harder and harder to take games so seriously. Something else just had to matter more.
Still, some people clearly do take their sports seriously, including various yahoos at the Gopher game who would surely regard themselves as Minnesota fans. Yet their behavior was juvenile to the point of being embarrassing. If a Badger backer (clothed in red, of course--a true Gopher fan had to be wearing gold) walked by the Minnesota faithful, they were subjected to all manner of annoying trash talk (even at the urinals, as I was to discover!). The metamessage was: This football game actually matters. It's a reflection of our civic pride. And we'd better show we're superior. And somehow, winning the game would constitute proof of all that. At some level, it's pretty pathetic--especially since after all the taunting, the Gophers lost, 31-28. A whole bunch of those vocal Gopher fans were left to eat crow and got the insults handed right back at them while heading out the door.
We can enjoy the drama of sport. And hey, let's root, root, root for the home team. But when an opposing player is injured on the field--as happened a few times to certain Badger players--let's have the decency NOT to yell, "Take him out in a body bag!"
But all that aside, a big WHOOO-HOOO! as the Twins top the Tigers 6-5 in 12 innings--it was a transcendent moment in sports, as good as it gets! Still, it really is only a game. Really.
1 comment:
That is exactly why I avoid football games.
There's something about Twins games, on the other hand, that inspires civility (though, embarrassingly, student nights are a whole different story).
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