I AM A FAN

                                                                                      

I love football.  I loved playing it, I love watching it and the guys that play the game are my kind of guys.  It is my favorite sport.  But I like all sports.  I am a little slow coming around to curling, synchronized swimming and that sport where gymnasts twirl around a stick with a scarf attached to it, but even those have their appeal.  The reason they do is they have fans.

Fans can be anywhere from a lone parent watching a loved one compete on a cold, drizzly day, to a face painted maniac, dressed like a circus clown, and everywhere in between.  They can be encouraging or showing support for an individual or team at the local park or they can be full-on, early arriving tailgaters that stay well after the final lights are out.  They can also be sharing pizza, gathered around a friends TV set.  And like me, quite often, alone in front of my TV just as excited as if I was there.  

The point is they are in the game.  For a few moments they remove themselves from their everyday life long enough to lose it for a while.  During that time all that is important is enjoying a competitive event and whether your team wins or loses.  Everything else is out there somewhere but lost for the time being. 

I love it when I am watching a game and the camera settles on a group of fans who must have spent more time on make-up than the cast of the Wizard of Oz.  Yelling, screaming and carrying on.  If their family is watching I am sure they would deny knowing them.  How cool that people can let it all hang out for few hours.  It even spills over to water cooler talk about the great play made to save the day or the official’s horrendous call to cost your team. 

Granted there are those who cross the line into rather deviant behavior.  The soccer beer hooligans come to mind.  Mob behavior and destruction are their calling card if their team should lose.  To say alcohol may have been involved is a laughable understatement.  Death threats and worse dot the history of the sport as do payoffs and bribes. 

The passion inherent to any sport is subject to the same extremes as politics or religion.  The difference is the core of sports is a game.  Bruised feelings aside the worse that can happen is your teams wins or loses.  Nothing earth shattering.  This from a guy who wants to lock himself in a closet when his team loses.  But I do recover quickly and am there cheering loudly at the next game.  That’s the beauty of being a fan.

Fandom is the best therapy known to man or woman.  I am not a scientist or psychologist but I would venture to say NASCAR fans, tailgaters, fans of major sports such as hockey, basketball, baseball, football, soccer and all the other sports of any kind, come Monday morning are among the more balanced, stress relieved people on earth.  It’s all good.