Why Sports?

Three days ago, I was reeling from another horrible New York Jets loss and feeling lost and frustrated as a fan. Today, it's hard to imagine how that held any significance for me at all. Sports, as much as they pay the bills, are essentially pointless. Even though they can seriously impact your state of mind in both good ways and bad—just last week we were getting teary-eyed watching elderly Cubs fans bask in something they thought they'd never see—they also don't mean anything in any real sense. Sports are not friends, or family, or anything, really. They're no different than a book sitting on your coffee table that you can pick up and read if you feel like it. That's always the case, but we pretend otherwise because it's fun to watch and get caught up in. For the most part we do, anyway. Sometimes the true significance of a particular game, team, or season becomes aligned with reality, though.

Last night, Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States of America. It was an incredible thing to see, really. A campaign that began with this man calling Mexicans rapists, pledging to literally build a wall around the border of the country, and promising to kick out and otherwise prevent Muslims from living in this country, ended in victory. Along the way he did and said many, many other terrible things. He will now take the same oath of office as Abraham Lincoln. An oath—to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States—at direct odds with virtually the entire campaign he ran. It feels like a pivotal moment in history and suddenly I care a little bit less about how the Jets stack up against the Los Angeles Rams.

I will still watch the Jets, and I will still curse them when they find a spectacularly inept way to lose to the spectacularly mediocre Jeff Fisher, but it also seems weird that I will do that. The uncertainty of what this election means for the country and the people in it, is not something I can recall in my lifetime. (Maybe 9/11, which is an insane thing to say about an election, but here we are.) It seems weird to work at a sports web site right now. It seems weird and more than a little pointless to think or in any way care about Skip Bayless, or to marvel at what an incredible cheater Tom Brady is, when the Supreme Court is in the hands of Donald Trump, when this country's racist element has been so stoked by eight years of a black president it elected his polar opposite. It feels weird and disheartening that a significant portion of the country feels the exact opposite of the way I feel.

At some point, that weirdness will inevitably fade, and day-to-day living will approach something closer to normal. Our capacity for simply dealing with shit is primeval and we'll get back to the business of our own lives because that's just the way it works, and that's OK, too. And a big part of the way I'll deal with shit is through sports. By caring too much about a football team that reciprocates with contempt. Through my irrational and personally troubling love for Alex Rodriguez. Through continuing to work for a sports web site. These things are inextricable from my daily life.

There are a lot of reasons today to acknowledge the ultimately pointless endeavor that is watching other people play sports. But even if doing so feels less important right now, it won't stop being important, because that's the way it has always worked. We need it to be important. Eventually, things will get back to how they were, or to something resembling how they were before yesterday. I will get pissed off about something stupid that Skip Bayless said. And I will revel in trolling Patriots fans once again.

Because seriously, fuck those guys.