Colorado just dropped OU 27-24 in Boulder in a Big 12 opener. OU was ranked #3 in the country.
Once upon a time, I was a big sports fan and especially a big Sooners fan. I lived and breathed this stuff on the weekend.
OU-Texas was especially “big” for me. I went down to Dallas many years and participated in big watch parties other years.
The past few years, not so much.
I decided about the time I sobered up that I just couldn’t and wouldn’t let 22 youngsters I’d never met ruin my weekend and sometimes ruin a whole week.
Since then, I’ve been more objective, I’ve pulled back and been given a different perspective.
Tonight, all of Oklahoma City, even the Notre Dame fans and the OSU fans and the Texas fans, will be just a little “down.”
Too bad. Tonight’s the 12X12 OVAC show and it should be absolutely wonderful. Trust me, there as well as at RedPrime, the official afterparty, and the whole lot of bars and nightspots in town will all be just a little less than if OU had won.
Oddly, if OU had won, it would not have made things appreciably better in the sense that no one would be out of their mind party down who isn’t that way anyway. For OU to win is kind of expected, so there isn’t much in the way of celebration, especially amongst fans of alternate alma maters.
But, when OU loses, there’s a little bit of a pall. Really odd, if you ask me. And when it’s an unexpected loss, an upset, or a loss to a rival like Nebraska or Texas or Miami, it’s worse. If OU loses to OSU, then their celebration offsets OU’s mourning.
MCARP writes often about his non-attachment notions, but this is a social example of people unaccountably and non-rationally becoming attached to a college sports team. It’s fairly easy to see on this level that people who “follow” sports or a particular team bring unnecessary and uncomfortable drama into their life due to events over which they have absolutely no control.
Control, as it turns out, plays an important role in being a fan. Studies show that people won’t watch a football game they haven’t seen and don’t know the outcome if the game has already been played. Somehow, their inability to control the outcome by their magical, sentimental, “powerful” cheers and boos ruins the fun of watching the game. Their superstitions don’t get a chance to bring forth their special ability to determine outcomes at long distance.
So, let’s think about this. If you can see that attachment to sports means that the fans have more emotional turmoil in their lives as a result, can we admit that perhaps the same thing is true of other attachments?
I wouldn’t go as far as MCARP with this as to say we should be attached to nothing because I think we should be attached to our families and our health and other high priorities. I’m certainly willing to say that, based on my experience in losing attachments, that if you can distance yourself from football, television programs, and a lot of other unnecessary or low priority stuff that it has a double payback:
You won’t be upset and sad about a great many things you can’t affect anyway.
You can focus your thoughts and problem solving and money on things that matter a good bit more to you in your more rational moments.
If we take this a step further, there’s more gold to be mined, in my opinion.
As a result of being in the news business and also experiences with my divorce law practice, I’ve had to learn to make more dispassionate analysis of the importance of events around me. What I mean by this is that a lack of planning on your part does not create an emergency on my part. My rule about what constitutes an emergency has been changed by my life experience. Emergencies have questions like: is it broken? bleeding? dead? in jail? If the emergency is that Bill won’t call Kimberly (fictional names) about visitation, I’m sorry but it’s just not an emergency. If OU loses and you are a fan, I’m sympathetic only fractionally. Nothing is broken or bleeding about you, you’re just bitching about the universe not unfolding as you think it should. People get pretty worked up about their landscaping, their relationship ups and downs, the fact that people from whom they borrowed now expect repayment, and even more remotely about someone else doing something somewhere else. Most curious to me are those people who get all worked up by celebrity gossip and news.
Let’s say I do get myself attached to OU football. OU lost to Colorado in an away game. Not the outcome I wished for. Is it the end of life as we know it? Gimmeabreak.
All of this is epitomised, in my opinion, by the Mike Gundy tirade and the Oklahoman response. The top half of the front page of the paper, including color pictures? Has everyone lost their mind? WTF?
Folks, can we talk? It is a game. You are attached to something for no reason. You prioritize it for no reason. If it’s your son playing, then it’s important maybe. If it’s your job, then it may be important. To you, but not to me. Not to the rest of us. Not in the larger scheme of life on this planet. A football coach doesn’t like the coverage he gets from the local news media. WELL. That’s never happened before, has it? Except every damn coach in the country and every single news outlet.
Now, politics. There’s a grand obsession worth pursuing. Follows is a 5,000 word analysis of forward budget spending on capital projects. Please read on.
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or not.
blogblah!!!
You too quickly dismiss corollary.
No highs without lows.
Invited drama is preferable to uninvited drama.
Distraction takes us away from pain caused by forces out of our control. Was it okay for me to give my kids movie night to ease the pain of their dad being in Iraq? Or should we have wallowed in our festering hatred of this administration and our fears that Jesse would return in a body bag? Can’t distraction take many forms? Some healthy (exercise) some not (twinkies) but none to be taken to an extreme (ripping the scrotum from a Texas fan).
I do experience a week-long high from my team winning. Not so much the loss. Today I turned off the television and cleaned the guinea’s cage and watched my kids eat popsicles. No pall here that will extend beyond the heat left in the tube.
Detachment from community seems so individualistic (selfish). You can call this “prioritizing” if you’d like, but it’s not at all how I was brought to view things, Mr. Relativity. Not fair how you teach me things like unyielding adoration for the Sooners, then decide later it’s bunk. What kind of father are you anyway? Certainly not Sooner Dead (my future epitaph). I can only hope that as I get older I won’t lose my soul the way you have. I won’t give another thought to the loss to Colorado, but I will forever mourn the loss of my father’s Sooner spirit.
The world trade center disaster was uninvited and we dealt with that by invading Afghanistan. Then we invited drama by invading Iraq. Now, when uninvited dramas come along, for example the nuclear capacity of North Korea or the fiasco in Darfur, we’re beyond our capacity to respond effectively. I’m not so sure that invited drama is better than uninvited drama when we don’t think through the dramas we invite.
I don’t withdraw from all attachments. I thought that was clear. I think MCARP makes a mistake when he generalizes from “some attachments cause unnecessary drama” to “all attachments are mere drama.”
Your husband, your children, are attachments of which I approve. If you are losing your cool because Brittany lost custody of her children, then you have no one to blame but yourself and I don’t approve.
Mr. Relativity doesn’t recede from anything I’ve written nor anything I taught you as a child. I went to OU and gained several degrees over many years costing many thousands of dollars. I am more fond of the University of Oklahoma than other higher learning institutions with which I have no contact. I would prefer that OU do well in all its endeavors, whether it’s recruiting National Merit Scholars, obtaining endowments or winning at sports like basketball, wrestling, vollyball, gymnastics and, yes, even football.
That said, I’m less attached to OU than I am to you and my grandchildren.
If something happens to you or the kids, I’m deeply concerned (I “invite” the drama because I let my attachment to my family affect how I feel and act).
If OU loses a football game, I’m not so concerned.
If something happens to you, I might well drive to Tucson and leave other priorities undone here in OKC. If OU loses a football game, I will not let the work on my desk go undone.
Should we have attachments?
Yes, I’ve said so, written it and believe family, for example, is a necessary attachment for a happy life.
Should we attach to just anything for the purpose of distracting ourselves from “real” life? I don’t think that proposition is defensible.
Of those attachments we form, can we put them in some sort of hierarchy? Yes, I have stronger attachments to family than to my alma mater.
My position then becomes: now that I have decided to have some attachments and now that I’ve ranked them, may I also prioritize the nature of my response to events in those categories?
I think so. I think some things are emergencies and some are not.
How high a priority should it be when Parrish breaks his leg? Parrish breaking his leg is a big deal. He’s family and therefore a high priority and a broken bone is among my “emergency” criteria. OU loses a game? Nothing broken, no one dead, light attachment, thus no emergency.
As to this particular comment on this particular post, my little girl will be Sooner Dead sooner than she thinks if she don’t quit snarking on her daddy.
HOW DARE YOU ATTACK BRITTANY?!?!?! What has she ever done to bring on on your scorn? She’s never once said a harsh word against you and yet she’s brought so many of us so much glee. You have aged into the heartless and cruel man wagging the bird to kids who trample his yard and forming too close an attachment with his cat while detaching from his neighbor.
I never said you had no attachments. I said your pulling away from community (and the community I meant is the one in which you live, the Sooner born and Sooner bred one) is selfish. There is damn little binding the folks of OK to the land they know is grand. You’ve got to give them football. Give yourself over.
All my love, Miss Snarkey Snarkerson