For every sports fan, there is a moment when you wonder if it is really worth it. For me, it was last year: Tennessee vs. LSU. As the clock rolled down to zero, my roomate and I leaped for joy. It had finally happened! Tennessee football was back on the map! We had finally gotten a big win that we had been looking for.

Of course, you all know the story after that. We had half of the team (and probably the waterboy) out on the field, so that lousy, no good, flea-bitten, man-ring wearing, three-time smug man-of-the-year, award-winning Les Miles got to walk away with another victory he didn’t deserve. For the record, I’m fairly convinced he has done some sort of deal with the devil.

To those of you waiting eagerly on your beanbag chair on Sunday morning, beer in hand, pizza at the ready, and counting down the minutes to kickoff with on a big neon sign.

To those of you with orange-and-white wallpaper plastering your room, a signed Peyton Manning in the corner and Smokey bed sheets, who spend your week wondering if ol’ Dooley will be able to pull one out against an SEC team. (Spoiler alert: I doubt it)

To you who think “using your time wisely” means buffing up on the facts of a certain team, player or coaching scheme instead of studying for that economics test that is sure to doom your college career, this question is for you.

Why?

Don’t worry, I have an answer, but before I give it, let’s discuss this a little longer. What is the point of us giving our hearts and precious time to cheer on and devote ourselves to a team that has no idea who we are?

I had a friend back in elementary school who was a die-hard Jacksonville Jaguars fan. Don’t ask me why. We grew up in Middle Tennessee! This was home of the newly founded Titans.

So great was this man’s love for the Floridian team that in the fourth grade, he couldn’t care less about writing in cursive or multiplication tables. Instead he could sit there and for 10 minutes and rattle off the entire roster, from starting quarterback Mark Brunell to Jimmy Whozatguy, the third string kicker.

Looking back, that’s pretty impressive for a 10-year-old. Once, he made my cousin’s nose bleed when he chucked a pencil case across the room because whomever the Jags were playing had come back to win at the last second.

Why? I’ll tell you why. We get our hearts kicked around year after year because “sport is an escape from life, and an embrace of living.” You can’t have one without the other. Are there moments in life when sports will seem infinitely insignificant compared to other things going on in the world? Of course there will be. In those situations, sports will be our escape. We live for moments.

Moments like when the U.S. hockey team upset the powerhouse Russian team. Family members were weeping with joy in the audience, and men with mustaches danced around the ice. A nation could never have been more proud.

Moments when Heisman winner Mark Ingram was so overcome by the award that he bawled like a 3-year-old who just dropped his ice cream cone. Big 215-pound running backs aren’t supposed to cry, but he did. So did we.

Through sports we break through barriers of race, age, career or any other thing that could alienate us.

It’s sharing a Sunday afternoon with your co-workers when otherwise, you might not even speak to them.

It’s a teenager the whole community comes together for when a torn ACL ends his season.

It’s seeing your grandfather light up because the team you both were rooting for pulled it out in the end, and then remembering that later at his funeral.

People say it is just a game, but sometimes it’s so much more.

 

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