I don't know about you, but sometimes, I don't like sports very much.
I'm not sure when these feelings started. Maybe it was when steroids became all the rage in the sport I once loved unconditionally. Maybe it was when the sexual assault of a female kicker on a major Division-I football team was justified because she "couldn't kick the ball through the uprights."
Or maybe it was when I realized coaches in my all-time favorite sport, college basketball, are plagued by a dirty prisoner's dilemma-keep up with the Joneses (or Caliparis or Selfs) in recruiting or forever face the wrath of your boosters because you can't get the players to win a national championship.
With so much to choose from, the only thing more unclear than the genesis of my love-hate relationship with sports is its end. Because for as many athletes and coaches who seem to understand how lucky they are to receive millions to play and teach the sports they love, there seem to be just as many who miss the point completely.
Exhibit A: Michigan head football coach Rich Rodriguez, who, in my opinion, is fortunate to still have a job.
Yes, the first year of Rodriguez tenure went poorly. The Wolverines finished 3-9, lost the most games in school history, missed a bowl for the first time in 34 years and recorded its first losing season in 41.
But Michigan could have gone 0-12 and I still wouldn't have questioned Rodriguez's security as its head coach. Losing seasons happen, particularly in transition years.
No, 43,200 seconds of on-field misery for the Wolverines could never draw out my sports-hating dark side like 20 horrifying seconds in Rodriguez's press conference before being humiliated 42-7 by Ohio State Nov. 22.
"You almost want to tell them, 'Get a life,'" Rodriguez said of fans expressing their displeasure over the team's play. "There's a whole lot bigger problems. Look at the economy."
Them be fighting words from a man who just signed a six-year, $15 million contract-not including the $2.5 million Michigan gave West Virginia in severance pay-a contract paid for, in part, by the weekly sale of 107,501 seats in the Big House, the nation's largest football stadium.
Perhaps Rodriguez was so stupefied in anticipation of being manhandled on the field that he forgot the University of Michigan is located in, well, the state of Michigan.
I'm pretty sure the people there know about the economic crisis.
Borders Group, the international bookseller based in the Wolverines' hometown of Ann Arbor, reported a net loss of $175.4 million this quarter and is hoping to cut operating expenses by $140 million next year, which I only can guess might include the firing of a few employees.
The Big Three auto companies, rooted in and around Detroit, have laid off tens of thousands of workers with no signs of slowing down the downsizing process-that is, if the industry even exists by the time 2009 rolls around.
And, this just in, $15 million man Rich Rodriguez would like Michigan fans to know he thinks they should be more concerned about the economy.
Last time I checked, football tickets, memorabilia and apparel are elastic goods. The Wolverine faithful should heed Rodriguez' advice, mind the economy and put the money they would have spent supporting their football team in one of those nice, new nationalized banks.
Wouldn't that be rich?
For in one terribly inconsiderate moment, Rodriguez demonstrated why people get turned off by sports... and trivialized why we love them.
At their best, sports can serve as an escape.
It makes no difference whether our personal situations are good or bad, or even if our teams are. The games are always played.
Sports can bring families, friends, campuses, cities and even nations together-from a Little League baseball game in Smalltown, America to the Olympics in Beijing.
And sports can provide narratives of personal triumph unlike almost any other medium. At the end of last academic year, I thought I was through with sports forever until a 45-year-old golfer named Rocco Mediate almost took down the greatest player of all time in an 18-turned-sudden-death-19-hole playoff for the U.S. Open in June.
So even though I hate sports now, I know that for a 15-day stretch spanning the end of this year and the beginning of next, I'll likely be on a couch, surrounded by the people I care about, watching football. And I'll love it.
Because for as much as the Rich Rodriguezs of the world drive me away from sports, my family and friends keep pulling me back.
And fortunately, for the first time in my entire life, I won't have to watch Michigan play in a bowl. If that doesn't make you love sports more this holiday season, I don't know what will.
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