The Agony of Defeat and the Agony of Winning: Sports are Really Sad, You Guys

*I should preface this by saying that I started writing this after the Patriots defeated the Texans, and finished after they succumbed to the Ravens.

 I root for Boston-based teams. This means I don’t get to complain without sounding like an asshole. In my lifetime, I’ve been lucky enough to see the Bruins, Celtics, Red Sox, and Patriots all win at least one championship. Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this. Kelly Clarkson told me so, and it IS so. I should feel satisfied. There are other questions I have (like WILL TAYLOR SWIFT EVER FIND TRUE LOVE?), but in terms of sports, I’ve put a check mark in every category, except for getting the Hartford Whalers to come back (for realz).

 But I don’t feel satisfied, even if I pretend like I’m an unsatisfed dragon, all up in the club, on rollerskates.

 And, again: I don’t know what it’s like to be a Cubs fan.
 I don’t know what it’s like to root for any Cleveland team, nor do I know what it’s like to be from Cleveland, just in general.
 I have no sports tattoos, nor would I riot (if I was sober) over sports.

 A short aside: My friend/archnemesis Dave is a Dolphins fan. At his house for a recent game, I saw his jersey from afar, and before I could see the number, thoughts like Who do you even put on your jersey if you are a Dolphins fan?... Do you go throwback? Do you even have options? were goin through my head. (BTW, the answer is Devone Bess, who I’m fairly certain I dropped for a kicker on one of my fantasy teams.) My point is that I have never had this problem. I have options, which can be revealing: a Brady jersey vs. a Welker jersey vs. a Wilfork jersey (DUH, what I own) all, I think, speak to different types of fans, and is fascinating, blah blah blah, but my point is that having an array of choices is a luxury, and in terms of being a sports fan, I’m totes rollin with The Haves/The One Percent/Jay-Z.

 And I try to be sympathetic, at least to people who aren’t my friends. Even though, I swear, every time I get cut off on the road, it’s by a dude in a too big truck with a Raiders sticker on the back. And I’m like, I get it, you’re angry, you are a Raiders fan (and probably have a small or malfunctioning penis). I understand, angry Raiders fan. Maybe not completely. But I DO know what it’s like to be a sports fan. I’ve drunkenly ugly-cried in bars over a loss (while being comforted by a man with an eyepatch). I make irrational declarative statements about players/coaches/referees. I have spent 12 hours in the same bar with a tally of PBRs written on one hand and the words YOUR MOM written on the other.

AndSo, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how sad sports can be, for EVERYONE: the players, the coaches, and the fans. Maybe not Shakespearean tragedy sad, but soul crushing sad.

All of the announcers spoke of, with clear awe in their voices, how Nick Saban was only going to allow himself to celebrate for 48 hours after Alabama crushed Notre Dame. (And also how he was so unappreciative of the Gatorade pour, giving new meaning to the term “Haterade.”) . This was supposed to be an example of hard work, success, etc., but really, it just made me think about how the best coaches seem to be always questioning, always searching, and never satisfied. If they win, it’s “yes, but we need to work on x and y…” Sometimes I have these fantasies (YEAH I SAID FANTASIES) where I try to shape Bill Belichick’s face into a smile (sort of like playing with one of those dogs with all of the folds on their faces) and it keeps drooping back into misery. They are never, ever, ever happy. They are like Sisyphus figures, where if they ever get the boulder to the top, they are thinking about how they are going to have to push it up again. Also, Sisyphus should wear a poncho and a headband. So many of the best coaches are grumpers for a reason: because they know they are chasing tomorrow/what’s always receding.

The players. While I think it’s easy to see football players as just chess pieces in a coach’s chess match, or as people who just try to hit other people really hard, and if it goes well, they are interviewed, and thank god and say “you know” a whole bunch, I still think that this is reductive. I also could see why NOT wanting to think about this would be preferable—wouldn’t you want to be ignorant of the tree of knowledge, if it leads to being Tom Coughlin or Phil Jackson or whatever other grumper you can think of? I DON’T think players famous for reading offenses and defenses are exceptions that prove the rule. I DO think that anyone who is elite at what they do, workwise, is probably fairly clever. Even Gronk. BTW, I love listening to Gronk talk. I love how he hangs out with porn stars. I see his as valiantly fighting a losing battle for the desire of lack of consciousness. Cause what’s the inevitable result of consciousness? These are players that dedicate their entire lives to playing this game, which will, in turn, spit most of them back out by the time they hit 35, leaving them with physical and occasional psychological damage. Maybe it’s best not to think too much about it. Moving on.

 I think fans are caught somewhere in between. Because we aren’t directly involved, we’re weirdly insensitive, to the point where, for fantasy football purposes, we occasionally wish for players to be hurt. Maybe not an ACL, we tell ourselves, that would be too far. Just a lil turf toe. And we  definitely are okay with seeming them humiliated. I could watch Sanchez run into his own player’s ass over and over again on Youtube. But I think fans who are hardcore invested (and I don’t know if this makes them more or less insensitive) have some of that coach’s anxiety, where even if we win, it’s like CanWeDoItAgainHowAreOurDraftPicksForNextYear. And during games, where the fate of the game has yet to be determined, the oscillations between total apprehension, utter misery, and pure joy are utterly ridiculous. See text message convos between me and AmberN during the Seahawks playoff loss:

 Amanda: This is so stressful.
 Amber: I think I’m going to throw up.

 Amanda: OMG
Amber: I just high-fived my rabbi like 3 times.

 Not even going to copy and paste the funnel into despair, because it’s just TOO SAD

Sometimes you can’t be happy because you’re so apprehensive that it’s going to go away. Just last week, I thought the Patriots had a clear path to the Superbowl. Both the Mannings were out of the picture, (silver lining: this will still hopefully lead to 100% less Manning commercials). We were winning, but everything seemed liked a pyrrhic victory: We won, but Gronk got hurt (again), we looked vulnerable, etc.

 (This is all sort of like how I felt about finding out that the winter storm that just hit Idaho was named Gandalf, until I realized that it was Saruman that sent all of the crazy winter storms, and so it was only half as wonderful.)

 Cue me in Jackpot, Nevada, crying into my Wilfork jersey, half-heartedly playing a slot machine that was built into the bar, watching as the Patriots fell to the Ravens.

 I don’t know. I would like to believe that maybe this is all the point. That everything that is wonderful and worth it doesn’t last—cake, sex, a great song—which might speak to why it’s so glorious. Nothing gold can stay. When Johnny tells Ponyboy to stay gold, what Ponyboy should have said was, NOT POSSIBLE, ASSHOLE.

A related tale: I’ve been watching Sons of Anarchy. This shit is stressful: people get blown up, lit on fire (fairly frequently), stabbed in the eye, stabbed pretty much everywhere actually. I’m emotionally invested in the characters; bad things continually happen to the characters. This shouldn’t surprise me, since I write stories, and it obviously makes sense that to sustain a narrative things generally have to keep happening, and in a show about a motorcycle gang that traffics drugs and guns, it makes sense that a lot of that stuff would be bad. Sometimes I just want the characters to be happy…but then the show would be over. But I don’t want the show to be over, do I? Would I be better off if I had never watched the show? This would be Gronk, in the metaphor, BTW. I wouldn’t be better off, or maybe that’s what I like to tell myself. My point is that I’m fairly certain there is a difference between watching something because you’re having fun or because you want to see how it all plays out, but I’m not really sure how clear that delineation is. Fun is always a little sad, you guys. Just bein' as emo as a flightless bird.