I’m not ashamed to admit that whenever I play basketball, even if it’s just shooting hoops, I am pretending I am in the NBA. Pretty much everything that entertains us in the modern world is predicated upon the idea of imagination. In a lot of ways, personal taste just boils down to one’s ability to let go and be transported by something. The more fantasy (usually involving ourselves) we can invest in a given mode of entertainment, the more we respond to it.
We are less than a week away from another exciting Portland Timbers season, and you know what that means! You do, right? Because, actually, I have no idea. I have no concept whatsoever of what soccer, professional or otherwise, means in the United States. Beyond the fact that it means more, I don’t have any idea what soccer means outside of the country, for that matter. The idea of soccer in general, but especially in America, is totally opaque to me. Given the rabid mythologizing of sports in our culture, I think this is very strange.
I’m fascinated by the way our society interprets sports. While almost entirely frivolous, sports are critical to our cultural identity and understanding. Fans and nonfans alike are constantly negotiating this balance, figuring out how much time, energy and passion to devote to something so trivial yet so clearly, so strangely important.
The road to the Final Four started on Sunday. That’s very unofficial, of course, but it’s the time of year that conference play is at its zenith, contenders have emerged and are rounding into form, and a growing list of bubble teams are jostling for a precious spot in the NCAA men’s basketball championship. On Feb. 10 each year, the finish line comes into view on the horizon. That’s where we’re headed. It’s still the regular season, but it is exciting, and we should pay attention.
For years and years, the Super Bowl marked the end of a season and the beginning of a long, depressing slog through months of no football. The NFL juggernaut would consume us for 22 breathless weeks, gloriously crown a champion and then retire quietly to a summer of peaceful slumber, leaving in its wake the bloated portion of the NBA’s regular season and the terrible promise of baseball. Except for the exhilaration of March Madness (and, for the sleepy village of Indianapolis, the Indy 500), sports fans of old were thrust from football bliss into the sports deep freeze.
Joe Flacco is less than a week away from leading his Baltimore Ravens into the Super Bowl. He has made the playoffs in each of his first five years in the league and has the most wins of any NFL quarterback since 2008.
Last week, two stories dropped that would ordinarily kick off a crap-storm of moral outrage from the world of sports journalism. The public shaming of cycling liar Lance Armstrong and the totally bizarre Manti Te’o dead-girlfriend hoax are exactly the kinds of situations that get all the “serious” sports journalists frothing at the mouth about the poison of athletic celebrity, the betrayal of innocence, the death of heroes, et cetera. Lots of heavy-handedness, lots of moralizing, lots of Jeremy Schaap slow-talking to us as if we were 9 years old.
On May 2, 2012, 12-time Pro Bowl linebacker Junior Seau put a gun to his chest and committed suicide. Last week, a study of Seau’s brain revealed that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that is being found more and more often in retired football players.
Once and future king: Sidney Crosby is eager to transition back to his day job after another late start by the WHL. Photo courtesy of Vancity Allie. This will probably…
Notre Dame is one of the most storied and polarizing names in all of sport. Hyperbole is their stock in trade, and there isn’t much room in the discussion for the subtlety and nuance of fine writing. I don’t really have an angle or an original take on Notre Dame football—I’m about 70 years too late to add anything fresh to the mythology.
By the time this column drops, the first seven games of the NBA season will be a distant memory. Once Tuesday rolls around and this paper is in your hands, most of the league will have played two whole games beyond that. We’ll have a brand new set of power rankings, and we’ll all feel pretty silly that we were ever even talking about those first seven.