American Heresy: Why I Don’t Give a Good Goddamn Who Wins the Super Bowl

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-oneill/60744/american-heresy-why-i-don-t-give-a-good-goddamn-who-wins-the-super-bowl

American Heresy: Why I Don’t Give a Good Goddamn Who Wins the Super Bowl
by Jaime O'Neill | January 31, 2015 - 10:14am

I have to confess that I’ve never taken a partisan rooting interest in any professional athletic team. Not in baseball, football, or basketball. It just never made any sense to me. I have taken an interest in a particular team’s victory, but mostly when I had a bet down. Otherwise, I don’t much care which team wins, though I do enjoy seeing the plays being executed, or being successfully blocked. There is an element of beauty in seeing almost anything being done well, and so a good pass or an unexpected tackle is a human activity I can appreciate when it is done with grace.

But I just have never taken to being a fan. I don’t buy the jerseys, the shirts, the caps, or the pennants. I don’t paint my face, or fire up a grill out in a stadium parking lot. I don’t lose my temper when any team loses a game, or is the victim of a bad bit of refereeing. As I said, it just never made sense to me, especially when it came to the kind of fan loyalty associated with the teams that bear the name of a city where few if any of the players grew up. How does it bring credit to a city when one group of millionaires in matching outfits defeats another group of millionaires in matching outfits, none of whom are playing on home turf, few of whom grew up there, were coached through high school there, drank the water there, or somehow gained more skill and character there?

If the team I root for in the city where I live prevails in such an athletic contest, how does it minimize the sleazy crap that’s going on in city hall, or the crumbling infrastructure, or the legions of people scraping by in slummy urban pockets. Professional sports franchises mean that the skill of a particular team is largely due to which of the rich owners was able to buy the best talent. And the city that has the honor of letting those paid mercenaries represent them had to pay a pretty penny for the privilege, with tax and land giveaways that ensure the rich owners get even richer. Even those rich owners rarely lived in the cities that bear the names of the teams they own, or that house the luxurious Sky Boxes those cities build for them to share with their wealthy friends or local enablers of their municipal thievery.

These thoughts were occasioned as I watched Green Bay play Seattle in the playoffs. It does take some of the excitement away from being a sports spectator when you deny yourself a rooting interest, and I could have rooted for Green Bay, since I grew up in northern Illinois, not that far from Wisconsin. Even closer to home is the fact that I taught at Butte College during the time the Green Bay quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, was a student and star athlete there.