I hate football. I find it a barbaric and brutish sport that
lacks the beautiful aesthetics of soccer, the raw athleticism of hockey, and
the sheer insanity of rugby. But in just a couple days I will be glued to the
TV, Seahawks cap firmly on my head (except for the moments when I’m nervously
working it between my hands), screaming my brains out for a sport I rank just
above cricket and just below curling in terms of watchability. (Obviously the
most watchable sports are 1) Women’s soccer 2) Cycling 3) Cheese Rolling 4) Olympic
Hockey and 5) Chess Boxing.)
So why the Seahawks? What is it about this team that is
making me care about a sport I still believe epitomizes pretty much everything
wrong with American culture?
There’s nothing inherent about the Seahawks per say. Growing
up in SoCal, it’s not like I was surrounded by football culture. The closest
team was still four and a half hours away and let’s face it, who the hell cares
about the Chargers anyways? Sure some
people pulled for the Niners, but you were just as likely to run into a
Panther’s fan or a Cowboy’s devotee.
As my dad’s family hails from Wisconsin and my mom’s clan
resides in the Pacific Northwest, I’d express vague feelings of hoping the
Packers or Hawks would win the Superbowl, but mostly couldn’t care less
because, man, is football a dumb sport. And yet, here I am, eagerly awaiting
the Superbowl. Not because of the game itself, but because of the connections
the game affords me.
To be human is to want to belong. We all crave that intimate
connection with others. We’re all looking for where we fit in. Some of us know
from the time we can first form coherent thoughts, “I love dogs. I want to do
something with dogs when I grow up. Maybe I’ll be a dog doctor.” And 20 some
odd years later, you’re graduated vet school. Others figure out their place
when they realize they’ve found the person they’re gonna spend the rest of
their life with. Or when they see their kid for the first time.
And some of us never find where we belong. So we search for
other ways to connect with each other. And yes, we find that sense of belonging
in sports. There’s something pretty special about the fact that a bunch of
athletic competitions with nonsensical rules can take people who may have
nothing else in common and unites them.
I watched the 2011 WWC final in a hole in the wall bar
designed to hold about 20 people. There must have been 100 of us in there that
day, breaking every fire code and drinking the place dry. To this day, I do not
know the name of a single other person in that bar. But for 180 minutes, we
weren’t a bunch of strangers watching a game, we were fucking family.
And when our beloved team lost, I turned to the guy next to
me who proceeded to wrap me in a giant bear hug as we both broke down sobbing. Connected
over our passion for a bunch of women kicking a ball around.
It’s not a made up phenomenon either. There have been actual
studies on this. While as far as I know, none have been done in The US,
European studies have shown that the rate of suicides actually decrease in a
country when they are participating in the World Cup. The country doesn’t even
have to be winning. They could get curb stomped in every game and “self-reported
happiness” would still be higher than normal.
So yeah, I still don’t like football. But I love the fact
that it lets me connect with my students over shared experiences and that after
weeks of sitting around a TV for a few hours every Sunday afternoon, I’ve
gotten a lot closer to people I thought I had little in common with and that “Didja
see the game?” is an easy way to start a conversation with anyone and that
Richard Sherman calling out people on their use of the word “thug” provides
context for a discussion about racism and that Skittles are now a perfectly
acceptable food to eat during a rugby match, because they work for Lynch right?
