So your sports teams stink

‘Why do you still watch? All it does is make you angry’

Reporters asked the senior from Bridgewater, MA what his best memory of playing for the Eagles was. After a long, sorrowful pause, Boston College basketball player Dennis Clifford finally responded, “Going out to eat.”

Clips of this interview circulated the internet. It serves as a sad but accurate depiction of BC’s abysmal on-court performance during Clifford’s stay. While sports fans like myself may not be able to empathize with the long hours spent in the gym and weight room that college athletes endure, we certainly live vicariously through the performances of our beloved teams and erupt with frustration and disappointment when our teams flop.

At Wake Forest, the student body is always eager for football and basketball season to begin. While surely there are those students who are solely concerned with the kegs and sundresses of tailgates, many of us follow the incoming recruiting classes and feel invested in the success of our teams.

Yet, even the most passionate of us fans lose faith when all hope of a bowl game or a tournament appearance disintegrates. The question, “Who are we playing?”  on campus is quickly replaced by “When’s the tailgate?”

Can you blame the disengaged fans? Why is it that us fans of unsuccessful teams choose to spend several hours watching games every week that, not always but very often, leave us angry and discouraged when we could spend that time watching Game of Thrones or studying for the accounting test we’ll surely bomb?

I recall one moment over Christmas break last year when my Dad and I sat in the living room angrily watching the Knicks, our favorite professional team, lose in what was a historically dismal season for the franchise.

“Why do you still watch? All it does is make you angry.” My mom asked from the other room.

Why do we watch? Sure if you’re a Patriots, Warriors, Alabama, or UNC fan it’s fun to watch your team excel, but what about us Titans and Knicks fans of the world? Why don’t those Boston College fans change the channel at half, or us Wake fans go to a fraternity party instead of BB&T Stadium after the tailgate?

You may expect a cliché answer that the handful of diamonds outweigh the miles of rough; that the upset against Indiana outweighed our sixteen conference losses. I don’t buy it. If fandom was all about winning, I would have become a Spurs fan the moment the Knicks traded half their future for a washed up Andrea Bargnani. My friends from Ohio would never put up with Johnny Manziel’s nonsense in Cleveland and instead root for their neighbors in Green Bay.

We continue to watch, win or lose, because watching sports is the one time of the day when we can truly express our unfiltered emotions. Imagine you could shout at your professor for assigning homework over Spring Break the way you curse at Lebron when he flops and the referee calls a charge. What if it was acceptable to storm out of the room and slam the door after that aforementioned accounting exam? Sports fandom is an emotional release exempt from all judgment.

I suggest that we fans of bad teams are not delusional for continuing to watch, but healthier and better people because of it. Sure, it would be nice to win, but if not, I’ll settle for blaming all my anger and frustration in life on the Knicks front office.

So, to my peers at the bottom of the ACC and in the shadows of the NBA East, maybe we’ll win soon or perhaps the Knicks will become a AAU team, but until then, keep watching.

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