Winning and losing

One of the questions I ask myself about this time every year is whether or not I am going to give up following college football. I am serious, really I mean it. For a long time I have wondered if I hate seeing my team lose more than I enjoy them winning. I already recognize that I have an adolescent passion for the game. More specifically, for the team I follow, the Florida Gators. I have always lacked perspective on most things. I am impulsive and I tend to be overly controlling and just a tad obsessive. From the crib forward, I have been this way, sometimes it is helpful, usually it is not. As someone once said to me, "Son, moderation ain't your high suit."

For a passionate fan, football, or any other spectator sport, is the antithesis of what a control freak really wants. I mean in my heart I know the players on the field want to win far more than me. But when I am caught up in the moment, I think that fumbles are meant to cause me personal dismay and interceptions are a deliberate stab in my heart. Yesterday, Florida played Arkansas. Florida was on the receiving end of six sacks and we lost four fumbles inside the opponent's twenty yard line. Based upon my view of the game as being intensely personal, every time our quarterback went down I blamed an offensive lineman for deliberately blowing his blocking assignment for the sole purpose of heaping more misery on me. The fumbles cut up my heart more than the six way cardiac bypass I had in Puerto Rico. I left the game physically and emotionally drained. What a way to spend a Saturday afternoon. So much energy expended, so much tension and worry and for what? Watching eighteen to twenty year old young men play a child's game? All that money, time and emotion in a situation over which I have zero control of the outcome? Maybe it is time to give it up. Did I mention we won? Yep, came back and kicked a field goal with nine seconds remaining in the game. Did I also say we are undefeated? Or that we have the longest winning streak in America? See what I mean, I focus on the negative and glide right by any contrary information that might make me rethink my belief that the game is played only for me. The other ninety thousand fans are merely extras in my movie and are no more relevant than background noise. Egocentric? You decide.