Emotional Investment

I am an advertiser's nightmare, a destroyer of the hype machine, anathema to television networks. The older I get, the more I ignore both adverts and hyperbole.

I'm not trying to hit on anyone's favorites or foes, but only using Michigan football as an example. I watched most of last Saturday's game against Ohio State and did not enjoy a minute. I was more relieved than happy when the Wolverines won. I simply didn't have any fun despite, for me, a positive outcome.

Last night U of M won the Big Ten title game over Iowa. I did not watch a second. Indeed, I crawled into bed and was asleep before 7. I woke up around 1 to find they had won, and I was happy. I didn't stress the outcome at all in ignoring the game and felt better afterwards.

Perhaps, to be fair, it's only me, yet I increasingly find that high powered sports just aren't worth the emotional investment. I'm inclined to exempt baseball, for various reasons I won't get into here. I can't imagine myself not watching and listening to baseball. But football, well, too much hype, too much hyperbole, and a certain unsportsmanlike arrogance. It's not good for the soul.

To be Fair to Football

A good friend of mine, one who's a huge football fan, posted a meme on Saturday which said you can't trust someone who didn't watch at least ten hours of college football that day. Well, I guess I can't be trusted. But for better reasons that than, I assure you.

I am less and less of a football fan every year. Yes, I still watch a few minutes during the course of a season, and I'm happy enough Michigan won Saturday, even against a patsy. I sincerely hope the Detroit Lions turn themselves around in my lifetime. But the game is just too brutal, folks. I've read far too many stories of my own old football heroes from 40 years ago who've ended up dead by suicide or severely incapacitated simply because I wanted to be entertained. Don't give me that tired old 'nobody made them play' nonsense. We did, by promising them fame and fortune. Or at least college scholarships for often silly, useless degrees. That in itself is a whole 'nother screed.

I don't want to go off on football only today, because I really don't want to make too much out of a surely humorous meme. I mean, it was intended to be funny, right? The sharer didn't really mean it, did he? I feel that I have to ask, because I wonder that about strident football fans quite honestly. They seem to take themselves insanely seriously. But in fairness to football, part of my attitude towards it has little (I hope) to do with the actual game. Sports in general are becoming less sportsmanlike and far too, shall we say, in your face.

I was watching the Little League World Series last month and was honestly appalled at the number of twelve year old players doing fancy bat flips after hitting home runs. That used to be a no-no, because it was, correctly, I will argue, interpreted as showing up your opponent. Look at what I did, you losers, it's saying to the other bench. Dare to challenge me, will you? Yet it was simply accepted as part of the game this time around, to the point where the broadcast commentators were praising the acts. ESPN was rerunning them for our, I suppose pleasure. We're apparently expected to be impressed by the disrespect.

I don't like it, and there's too much of it in too many of our sports and games. I see it with my beloved Detroit Tigers, an embarrassingly horrible squad this season, where players hit meek, ground ball singles and then in triumph mime silly messages back to the dugout. They have no right being so impressed with themselves. Yet what have we been told, how are we typically sold on the importance of sports for youth? That it teaches sportsmanship, the idea of learning integrity and respect in how and what we play. It used to be you didn't 'show up' the other team. You played your best and let that speak for you.

Sports are becoming too much about bravado and too little about respect. I do think it's particularly glaring with football, where the degree to which players seem to need to 'fire themselves up' before and during games is downright garish, if not flat out ostentatious. But it's becoming part of our sports in general, and I do not believe it is a good thing.

Talking curling

All we did last night was talk curling. Yep. That's all we did.

We talked about the shots we missed and how that did not help the team. Yep. We did that.

The others of us, when not lamenting our own obvious and blatant fouls, assured the other guys that they didn't hurt our efforts all that much. If at all. Yep. We did that. Because that's what curlers do. We tell each other that they did okay.

Yep. It's what we do. It's the curling mindset.

I think we'd be a better world if more minds were set that way.

Curling: the good sport game

Living in Detroit, it's hard not to develop an appreciation for things Canadian. One of those things for me is the sport of curling, which I learned to love while watching it on the CBC (that's the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for you neophytes) when I was in my teens. I've played for years now. It's not merely that the game itself is grand, but in playing I've discovered that, of all sports, curling is the most sportsmanlike and curlers are great people. At all levels.

As an example of this, I'll never forget a curling tournament in Windsor, Ontario I had quite a thrill: I was lucky enough to meet David Murdoch, a Scot who has now been the World Curling Champion twice: in 2006 and 2009. He was walking right past me and I said, somewhat stupidly I'm sure, "You're David Murdoch!" He replied, with huge grin, "I am! And who might you be?" We went on to talk for several minutes about curling as a friend snapped a picture of us. Too cool.

Though he was the only one I was fortunate enough to meet up close and in person, it demonstrated that virtually every curler at virtually every level is very approachable. The reason is simple: every curler is an ambassador for the game, and even the top ranked ones know and accept that. They are sportsmanlike on the ice yet, more importantly, sportsmanlike off the ice.

Murdoch could blown me off. He unfortunately had a poor tournament and there's a degree to which I would have cut him slack had he been terse in our meeting. His team had been eliminated by that point, and at 11 PM on a Friday who could have blamed him if he simply wanted a pint or two to drown his sorrows, as many of us may want at the end of a bad week ourselves. Yet he wasn't short or snippy. He was quite gregarious, and generous in giving my friend Ron and I the ten minutes of his time that he did.

Curlers are ambassadors for the sport. I'm not saying that there aren't athletes in other sports who think likewise and approach their game that way. Yet it certainly is a feeling which could be more widespread, and it certainly doesn't seem as ingrained in others as it is with curling and curlers. But the bottom line is this: in promoting the sport we are promoting the attitude which goes along with it. We are promoting the attitude of sportsmanship and fair play and proper consideration of others.

Curlers are a brotherhood, sisterhood, sorority and fraternity all in one. If we can promote that among ourselves it might eventually spread to everyone we come in contact with in our daily lives. It's hyperbole in this case, perhaps, but what's so bad about that?