By Steve Janoski
Growing up, I was probably one of the biggest sports fans I knew… and I knew a lot of them.
Everything was all about the games. You were judged in school by what football team you liked, and how they played on Sunday was a direct measure of the abuse you might or might not have to endure the following day.
We had all the jerseys and knew all the stats — we knew whether or not Emmitt Smith’s shoulder had dislocated in practice or Michael Irvin had been arrested over the weekend — and how it was all going to affect the next game.
And, after bleeding by your TV every Sunday for four months, getting to watch your team win the Super Bowl was a triumph of immense proportions that you knew was going to give you bragging rights over all of your friends (especially the Cowboys fans) until at least the following September.
We lived and died by the game, and it truly meant something to us.
As time progressed, however, it changed for me. No longer personally involved in football (or any sport) after high school, I found it hard to find that same fire on Sundays, and as I matured, I realized this might not be a bad thing.
Looking back I realized that for all those years, I had taken the whole thing too seriously. I got too upset when the Giants would take a beating or the Red Sox would blow a ninth-inning lead in typical Red Sox fashion, and the step back might have been a necessary one for my own sanity.
I still love watching the games, of course, and cursing a blue streak when a save is blown or a touchdown is scored against is still a common occurrence for me.
But that overwhelming stress is gone, and that empty feeling after a playoff loss or a season-ending skid has faded out along with the appeal of wearing another man’s name on the back of my shirt.
It’s important to remember that in the end, these games mean nothing in the overarching novels of our lives.
We live a short enough time as it is, and to put so much emphasis on something that we can’t control in the least is dangerous. I recently read an awe-inspiring statistic that 15 percent of men would miss the birth of their first child if their team was in the Super Bowl and they had the chance to go.
There’s nothing wrong with being a fan, of course, and even I am not jaded enough to miss the inherent beauty of certain remarkable happenings in sports such as the 2007 Super Bowl or the 2004 Red Sox-Yankees series.
But then having become more involved with boxing over the last five years and becoming more of an “active” participant in my sport of choice has also made the notion of sitting on a couch drinking beer while referring to the team I’m watching as “we” seem even more ludicrous.
I am reminded of the scene in Good Will Hunting when Robin Williams is trying to explain to Matt Damon why he gave up the chance to see Game 6 of the 1975 World Series (one of the great games in Red Sox history) for the chance to talk to a beautiful woman at a bar who would later become his wife.
“I just slid my ticket across the table and I said, ‘Sorry guys, I gotta’ see about a girl,’ Williams said.
He had his priorities straight.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/sports/139227504_What_s_more_important_-a_game_or_your_girl_.html
Showing posts with label Dallas Cowboys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dallas Cowboys. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The empty lives of fantasy football junkies
BY STEVE JANOSKI
Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010
We all know a guy like him. He’s been a Giants’ fan since you were in first grade together, but all of a sudden, he comes into the bar with a Maurice Jones-Drew jersey on a Sunday afternoon.
His opening comment is likely going to be along the lines of, “Bro, you’ll never guess who I got on my fantasy team— we’re gonna’ be siiiiick this year.” Clearly, he had the first pick in his fantasy football draft…and then he went out and bought the jersey of the guy he drafted.
Shortly after, he begins listing all the players he chose, and you stop listening and tip your pint glass back in the attempt to stop your ears from bleeding because really, who cares who anybody else has on their fantasy team?
Such is what the first weeks of the football season have become.
Long ago, we used to root for the team we actually liked— now, pretending to be the Jerry Jones of our very own football team has us rooting for players we hate on teams we despise.
I was guilty of this last year when I picked Dallas Cowboys running back Marion Barber to be on my team, “The Bayshore Yagabawms.”
I should have known better, because as a lifelong Giants fan, nobody has hated the Cowboys organization with more vigor than I.
Regardless, in a move that rivaled Benedict Arnold’s treason, I still picked Barber.
I realized the trappings of fantasy football during the Giants- Cowboys game last year as I watched Barber rip off run after run, killing my team but earning my fake team points.
On one play, he tore through the line and sprung for a 20 or 30 yard run, causing me to curse vehemently at the TV all the while being quietly semi-happy that I was getting fantasy points for it, only to end the play cursing and swearing again when Barber gimped off the field clutching his hamstring seconds later (an injury that put the Yagabawms in the cellar for the rest of the year.)
Fantasy football had turned me into an indecisive, blithering idiot in a matter of seconds, and I felt guilty, dirty even, for having rooted for Barber against my boys for even a second.
This year, although I refused to draft any Cowboys, I made the mistake of trying to manage four different teams simultaneously. What I didn’t realize is that running multiple teams is like trying to date more than one woman at a time— if you think you’re handling it smoothly and things are going well, you’re probably about one step away from a horrific, Chernobyl-style disaster that will leave bodies in the streets and cities destroyed.
Some guys, I’ve heard, have gone as far as managing 10 or 15 leagues at a time.
I don’t know where they find the time to actually watch the games in between managing their mythical teams, but it’s a safe bet that they don’t have to worry about things like dating.
On the other hand, fantasy football does give me a reason to watch games that the Giants aren’t playing in, and offers me someone to root for because, in a roundabout way, I’ve got money on them.
It’s also been adept at getting the general public more into football—one rookie fan I know was overheard during a draft whispering, “What’s a ‘bye week?’”
Now, this Don Quixote of the football world is welded to the TVs at the local dives every Sunday, alternating between fits of joy and despair as the scores tumble and rise—it’s like sitting at a craps table, except the drinks aren’t free and nobody cares when you win.
The NFL has scored huge with fantasy football, and as the game tightens its narcotic grip on the hearts and minds of the young males of this country, one wonders whether “Draft Day” will eventually become a holiday, like some say the day after the Super Bowl should be.
If it does, I’m taking that whole week off, because I don’t want to hear who everybody picked.
Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010
We all know a guy like him. He’s been a Giants’ fan since you were in first grade together, but all of a sudden, he comes into the bar with a Maurice Jones-Drew jersey on a Sunday afternoon.
His opening comment is likely going to be along the lines of, “Bro, you’ll never guess who I got on my fantasy team— we’re gonna’ be siiiiick this year.” Clearly, he had the first pick in his fantasy football draft…and then he went out and bought the jersey of the guy he drafted.
Shortly after, he begins listing all the players he chose, and you stop listening and tip your pint glass back in the attempt to stop your ears from bleeding because really, who cares who anybody else has on their fantasy team?
Such is what the first weeks of the football season have become.
Long ago, we used to root for the team we actually liked— now, pretending to be the Jerry Jones of our very own football team has us rooting for players we hate on teams we despise.
I was guilty of this last year when I picked Dallas Cowboys running back Marion Barber to be on my team, “The Bayshore Yagabawms.”
I should have known better, because as a lifelong Giants fan, nobody has hated the Cowboys organization with more vigor than I.
Regardless, in a move that rivaled Benedict Arnold’s treason, I still picked Barber.
I realized the trappings of fantasy football during the Giants- Cowboys game last year as I watched Barber rip off run after run, killing my team but earning my fake team points.
On one play, he tore through the line and sprung for a 20 or 30 yard run, causing me to curse vehemently at the TV all the while being quietly semi-happy that I was getting fantasy points for it, only to end the play cursing and swearing again when Barber gimped off the field clutching his hamstring seconds later (an injury that put the Yagabawms in the cellar for the rest of the year.)
Fantasy football had turned me into an indecisive, blithering idiot in a matter of seconds, and I felt guilty, dirty even, for having rooted for Barber against my boys for even a second.
This year, although I refused to draft any Cowboys, I made the mistake of trying to manage four different teams simultaneously. What I didn’t realize is that running multiple teams is like trying to date more than one woman at a time— if you think you’re handling it smoothly and things are going well, you’re probably about one step away from a horrific, Chernobyl-style disaster that will leave bodies in the streets and cities destroyed.
Some guys, I’ve heard, have gone as far as managing 10 or 15 leagues at a time.
I don’t know where they find the time to actually watch the games in between managing their mythical teams, but it’s a safe bet that they don’t have to worry about things like dating.
On the other hand, fantasy football does give me a reason to watch games that the Giants aren’t playing in, and offers me someone to root for because, in a roundabout way, I’ve got money on them.
It’s also been adept at getting the general public more into football—one rookie fan I know was overheard during a draft whispering, “What’s a ‘bye week?’”
Now, this Don Quixote of the football world is welded to the TVs at the local dives every Sunday, alternating between fits of joy and despair as the scores tumble and rise—it’s like sitting at a craps table, except the drinks aren’t free and nobody cares when you win.
The NFL has scored huge with fantasy football, and as the game tightens its narcotic grip on the hearts and minds of the young males of this country, one wonders whether “Draft Day” will eventually become a holiday, like some say the day after the Super Bowl should be.
If it does, I’m taking that whole week off, because I don’t want to hear who everybody picked.
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