Dumping Them Out: Winning Is A Drug

Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. Pardon me for my long rambling opening (or technically my second) paragraph.

From working at Barstool I've had it beaten into me that in order to be a "worthy fan" of a team, you have to behave a certain way online, or have a certain set of qualifications. So because of that I always kinda feel like an asshole for calling myself an Indiana fan. Because first and foremost, I'm a Bowling Green Falcons fan. Because I graduated from Bowling Green. But I was also born in Bloomington, Indiana. Both my parents graduated from there. And until VERY recently, Bowling Green and Indiana were two of the most hapless teams to cheer for in all of college football. So I felt fine about it because why the hell would ANYBODY choose those two teams as "their teams". But now that Indiana is legitimately good, for some stupid reason I feel guilty about it.Because having 2 teams you cheer for is like, the greatest sin in all of sports fandom. But that doesn't mean I don't care about both of them. I'm not faking it when I'm sitting alone in my apartment and aggressively fist pumping every Indiana first down in the first quarter vs Michigan State. And if I was never on the internet, I'd be perfectly happy and unashamedly cheering for my two sports teams. College football is meant to be entertainment, right? People should be able to enjoy it however the please. How another person cheers for their team (or TEAMS) shouldn't affect anybody else, as long as they're not like, constantly rubbing your nose in it. Just going to preface that before I start this blog. 

I genuinely think there's an argument to be made that sports are more fun when the teams you cheer for suck. Maybe not in pro sports, but definitely for college. Having expectations is awful. For college football in particular, I spent my whole life having zero expectations for my teams. Every Saturday I would check in on Bowling Green and Indiana, and if they were getting their ass kicked, I'd simply move on to different games and enjoy the entirety of the college football slate. Nothing bad could happen. Sometimes Bowling Green would make a run at the MAC Championship and I'd get stressed about those games. But for Indiana specifically, if they lost, I'd be over it in 5 seconds. They were never meant to win anyways. But every once in a while, when Indiana would pull a rabbit out of their ass and beat Penn State in overtime…

It was the most fun thing ever. Same with anytime the Bowling Green Falcons would upset a power conference team early in the season. The joy you get from pulling off a massive upset as an underdog… I would never say it's as fun as what winning a National Championship must feel like. But if I had to guess (and I know this isn't a 1-to-1 comparison, every fan is different), I'd imagine that Indiana's win over Penn State in 2020 was equally fun for Indiana fans as Ohio State fans have every time they win a college football playoff semi-final game. And the Ohio State's of the world are making the National Championships about as often as bad football teams pull off random upsets. The only thing that matters as a sports fan is how happy your team makes you. And your happiness as a sports fan is only determined by how far your team exceeds expectations. 

Winning is like a drug. When you experience it for the first time, it's incredible. When you take long breaks between experiencing them, they hit harder. But when you're experiencing that drug/win every week… when you build up a tolerance… you start needing more and more of them to feel the effects. And if you get addicted to winning (i.e. getting your fix) every game, but then something unexpected happens and you don't get it, you're devastated. It completely ruins your next few days. You essentially experience win withdrawal. I'm now expecting Indiana to win every week. So when they got off to a slow start vs Michigan State yesterday, and for a brief second I was faced with the possibility of not getting my win, I started to freak out. I had family coming to town yesterday. During that first quarter I was thinking, "God damn it. I was excited to see everyone for dinner, but if Indiana doesn't win I'm going to be agitated the whole time." 

If Indiana didn't give me my win on Saturday, it would have ruined my weekend. That would never have been a possibility 3 years ago. And by tomorrow, the effects of Indiana's win will have worn off, and I'll be stressed about hopefully getting my next fix vs UCLA next weekend.

Speaking of Indiana, Scott Hanson (of NFL Redzone fame) tweeted this yesterday. 

I'm honestly not sure what I think about that take. Pretty much everyone in the replies was shitting on him for it. But I do think he brings up an interesting point. If that defender blew the receiver off his feet the second his toe touched, so that his heel never had a chance to touch the ground, it would have been a complete pass. If the receiver had dragged his toe until he was deep out of bounds, and THEN his heel came down, they probably would have called it a completion. There's something a little off about that. I can't quite place how to fix it. I'm not even sure if it needs fixing. But there's something a little weird about that rule. 

One more thing. I was thinking about this, this morning for some reason. It's the most fucked up thing that can happen in football. It didn't necessarily happen yesterday (as far as I know) but it's happened in the past. I don't even have an example off hand (I think it may have happened last week but I can't remember the game). But I'll do my best to explain. Somebody reading this will know what I'm talking about. There are times where a ball carrier is being tackled… it's usually in a gang tackle situation where there's a pile of defenders (and teammates) falling on top of him… where the ball carrier's knee will be about 6 inches from the ground, and RIGHT before his knee touches the turf, some 350-pound linemen will come down on his leg, and his tibia/fibula (between the knee and ankle) will snap in half. And because his lower leg snaps in half, it keeps his knee up in the air. Since his knee is still in the air, and he's feeling IMMENSE pain from his leg being snapped in half, he fumbles the football. Then they review the play in super slow motion, and you watch the whole disgusting leg break fumble in 0.1x time. I see that happen at least once a year, and it's the saddest, most unfair, most fucked up thing ever.

Here's a visual aid.