It’s hard to get my Mom to shut up. However, when in the middle of a week where I had multiple tests and an array of papers do I managed to do just that.
No I don’t have any secret method to share with all of you. Lets just say that even throughout everything going on, I had just recited the trials and fates of all my hometown sports teams, professional and college, from memory as well as listing off a couple stories my Mom didn’t know about. She was shocked. She shouldn’t have been. The writing was on the wall when as a kid I was always stealing the sports section and checking the box scores on my favorite teams. It should have become clearer when she learned that in high school I ditched a day of school and caught a ride with a friend up to Boston for the Red Sox World Series parade in 2004. Not an easy task seeing as I was at a boarding school in Connecticut at the time. Needless to say, sports have become a major part of my life. Most friends look at me like I’m crazy when it comes to the level of passion and devotion I give to my friends. The truth is, I can’t follow a team for 162 games (baseball), or 82 games (basketball and hockey), or 14 weeks (football) with out falling in love with a team. The worst is baseball where with the long season and the almost daily games you can start living and dying by each pitch.
Now while this might seem like just another crazy fan rant, the truth is that I’m strangely not the only person to feel this way. Even though it seems I might be the only person at SMU that feels this way. Sports here have about the intensity and fun of a little league match where you don’t know any of the kids. The passion is practically non existent from both fans and players. Perhaps it’s the small school, perhaps it’s the fact that everyone is so busy. Perhaps it’s simply that neither the students nor athletes care. I stopped counting the number of times I saw athletes out drinking and complaining about coaches and workouts. I stopped going to games because they just simply lacked energy. I’m not saying this is true across the board, occasionally there was a basketball game that brought back some of that energy I’ve lived and died with over the years. Even the hyped inter-league sports, also known as the Greek sports league, is rather dull as most players drink before or during games. Great social event, bad sporting event. What do you think it would take to turn this around? A winning season from a team? The fans would need to provide some inspiration. A school that fed to the big leagues? Not likely to change seeing as only one person was drafted from SMU in the recent NFL draft. And it was a kicker. Compared to similar schools like TCU (their football team alone is ranked 7th in the nation and had 5 members drafted into the NFL this year alone, and don’t get me started on how good their baseball team is, or their two-peat champion equestrian team), SMU is certainly lacking something. What do you think it is?
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