FROM THE ARCHIVES: On Not Caring Whether We Win or Lose
The joy and pain of loving sports.
Updated March 12, 2024
I’ve tried my best to keep to a twice-a-week publishing cadence. On Monday, I share a story, and then on either Friday or Saturday I write a dispatch for my paid subscribers. But I’ve been slow to finish my four-part ping-pong epic, in part because my parents’ arrival in Knoxville to see the grandkids over the weekend shifted my attention to family time.
Since Saturday, I’ve been thinking about this essay, which I first published in 2022 after the Lady Vols scraped into that year’s Sweet 16. Since the one-year anniversary of Argentina’s World Cup victory, Rosario Central triumphed in a playoff-style tournament to claim its first domestic championship (sort of) in more than 30 years, and Iowa, which I watch entirely for the magic of No. 22, has been on another Clark-inspired tear. But that’s only one side of the coin. This spring, Everton are once again in a relegation scrap. And the Lady Vols, ahead by two points and within 1.1 seconds of completing their hero’s journey arc after rallying from 23 points down, found a new way to blow it against undefeated South Carolina in the SEC Tournament semis.
Some losses are harder for me to take than others. So, in light of that, enjoy my reflection on the disease that is sports fandom. If you like it, read my other sports stories here.
-Brian
With 30 seconds left in last night’s Lady Vols game, tiny, 12th-seeded Belmont was ahead by two points after trailing by 14 inside Thompson-Boling Arena. Tennessee’s women had lost only once before at home in the second round of the NCAA tournament. But to me, that was only more reason to expect it: the peak of a mountain of sports-related disappointments I had suffered since Tennessee’s third-seeded men lost their second-round tournament game against unfavored #11 Michigan on Saturday night.
On Sunday morning, Everton, the European club to which I’ve pledged my footballing allegiance, crashed out of the FA Cup quarterfinals, losing 4-0 away to Crystal Palace. Their defeat was followed hours later by Rosario Central’s, 1-0 at home in front of boisterous support in their local rivalry match-up against Newell’s Old Boys. The day was capped with the second-seeded Iowa women, whom I’ve taken a liking to for the Messianic play of their 20-year-old point guard Caitlin Clark, losing at home to No. 10 Creighton.1Â
Beyond busting my brackets, this weekend broke my spirit.
By the grace of God, the Lady Vols didn’t join the list of losers (at least not yet). With what could’ve been their last possession, freshman Sara Puckett buried a three from the corner after looking like she had been concussed just minutes earlier. The most Tennessee thing ever had not happened. The Lady Vols are going to the Sweet 16.
Nono, my maternal grandfather who taught me to love both soccer and stories, says that fandom is the cancer of the otherwise sane and healthy. Being a sports fan is a slow, self-inflicted pain. It is like dying, every weekend, by a thousand paper cuts or placing our own heads beneath the blade of the guillotine.Â
I’m embarrassed, really, to be the kind of person who allows even five minutes of my day to be eroded by the loss of a sports team that doesn’t feed or clothe me or put money in my pocket. I have experienced moments of euphoria; that is true. One of those, in 2010, was nearly suffocating to death beneath a pile of my close friends on the carpet of Mickey’s parents’ living room after Great American Hero Landon Donovan scored a last-minute goal against Algeria to send our nation through to the second round of the 2010 World Cup. Even this past Thursday at my daughter’s Soccer Shots practice at Sequoyah Park, I felt a pang of joy when the message came through my Everton group chat that Alex Iwobi had scored a 99th-minute winner in a crucial relegation scrap against Newcastle. I experience this dopamine rush every time a team I love wins something important.
On the other side of the joy is the suffering I’ve endured watching Argentina lose a goalless Copa América Final to Chile in 2016—its third consecutive failure to score or win a final dating back to the extra-time loss to Germany in the World Cup. Or of Tennessee men’s basketball team defeating Kentucky in the SEC Tournament semis in 2019—celebrating raucously with my in-laws and a grown man I’d just met at Fieldhouse Social who told me, mid-game, he hates Kentucky so much that if they played North Korea or Russia, he’d cheer on the bad guys—only to lose the final by 20 to Auburn the next night. How does the joy compare to all the time with family and friends lost for games that I claimed I couldn’t miss or the hours spent mourning after a painful defeat?
My mood was piss-poor through the weekend, even before the Vols cracked eggshells on their faces. Saturday afternoon, like a child, I threw a fit in the car between the women’s first-round game at 3 p.m. and the men’s game at 5 because, instead of watching basketball on the couch, Haley told friends that morning we’d meet them at the park for a birthday party. In the car, she couldn’t find a radio station broadcasting the game or get Bluetooth to work. So I transformed from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde: the person who lives inside of every sports fan (and certainly every Argentinian), satirized by the comedian Jero Freixas, whose video of refusing to attend his cousin’s wedding in Mexico because it was scheduled during the World Cup group stage went viral in 2018.
Over the years, I’ve taken sick days at work after tough losses. I’ve sat in the darkness of my bedroom muttering through tears or lamenting over the phone to Mickey, calling from the Dominican Republic after the U.S. men lost in Trinidad and failed to qualify for the World Cup, instead of going out for a drink with friends who are not mentally unwell and sleeping the devastation off to start the next day on the right foot.Â
To what extent will I let my love for sports afflict me? Will my life always revolve around World Cups and March Madnesses?
Last summer, during the Tokyo Olympics, I woke up at 4 a.m. on workdays to watch the U.S. women lose soccer games. At the Beijing Olympics in February, I spent evenings watching men’s curling, experiencing the familiar feeling of the air exiting your lungs when the mustachioed U.S. men fell out of medal contention. I’ve already written about the pain Argentina’s male soccer players have caused me over the years, as well as the joy that came with Lionel Messi’s redemption at the Copa América. Will I go through this all over again during the Qatari World Cup in December?2
I do have some hope I can outgrow this. From 2016 through 2018, I managed to free myself from Everton’s grip most weekends. With my Saturday mornings back, I worked out with friends and drank coffee while reading books in peace and solitude that does not exist when you’re watching sports or raising small children. Long stretches of my calendar were not blocked off for meaningless cups and tournaments. Then God sent Haley, and she introduced Tennessee sports fandom into my life. And whether it’s the football or men’s and women’s basketball teams, the Vols are the perfect pairing for the teams I loved before: an expectant fanbase, underperforming squad, overwhelmed coach, and hope at the start of every season crushed, rebuilt, then demolished again by season’s end.
Being a Tennessee and an Everton fan is like potty training a toddler. After picking their turd up off the floor for the seventh or eighth time, you reassure yourself that the next one is destined to go in the toilet before discovering a trail of feces running straight to the bedroom carpet.Â
What’s worse than being afflicted myself is that I’ve decided to bring my children into this. Not so much sports, in general, but the specific denomination of sports fan I belong to. A part of me wishes I could reset and expose my children to teams that win. That tomorrow I could wake up and not suffer a moral crisis for switching their allegiance to Manchester City. That come college football season I could see the color maroon or hear Florida and not recoil. But, at this stage of my life, it is simply not possible. Roger Bennett, the comedian who co-hosts the Men in Blazers podcast, tweeted months ago after Everton actually managed to win a game something that I feel so deeply inside my soul:Â
Thankfully, for at least the next four days until they face top-seeded Louisville in the Sweet 16, I’ll have the Lady Vols’ victory to remind me that, occasionally, being a sports fan is worth it. That it isn’t always pain—just usually.
Want to talk about a storyline? Lauren Jensen, the sophomore guard for Creighton who hit the winning 3-pointer with 15 seconds on the clock, had transferred from the Hawkeyes at the end of last season, after they fell to UConn in the Sweet 16, to get more playing time elsewhere. For Iowa, she had featured in just 17 games, averaging under 2 points. She led Creighton on Sunday with 19 points. Clark, on the other hand, had a season-low of 15 after leading the nation in points and assists throughout the season.
There is not enough time to discuss it here. But far beyond afflicting us personally, there is a case for how, through the use of sports propaganda or sportswashing, we allow very, very bad things to happen to other human beings. One such case is this year’s World Cup in Qatar. Beyond having to be moved from summer to winter because of the oppressive heat and the risk of on-field collapse or death for the players, the Qatari organizers are directly responsible for the death of thousands of migrant workers who were shipped in to construct the stadiums that not existed at the time of the bid.