Sports Celebrations

Watching the Super Bowl and other professional sports games always amazed me how we pick our favorite teams when we’re too young to fully appreciate the commitment, and then we stick with that team no matter how horrible they are. We put up with memes about teams, insulting comments, sneers, jokes, offensive bumper stickers or car decals with cartoon characters desecrating our team’s logo, loss of friendships over careless snide remarks, and literally countless opportunities to defend our team whether they deserve it or not, just because we fell in love with them at a young age and entered into some kind of imaginary one sided relationship that will outlast most actual and more beneficial commitments in our lives. Even if our team doesn’t make the Super Bowl, we route for a team that’s in it based on which one our team hates the least, aka the lesser rival. It’s illogical, but that’s how we roll. On the flipside, if our team is exceptional, we brag about them as if we personally had something to do with their success. I’m just as guilty of all of the above. Another thing that amazed me at the Super Bowl and most sporting events is the tradition of dumping an entire cooler the team was drinking from onto the coach in celebration. What kind of messed up admiration festivity is that? How is that a congratulatory gesture? If I was a coach and you dumped a cooler everyone with E. coli and the rampant flu was drinking from onto me, I would not laugh and say, “Oh, you guys!! How funny! Thank you!” Those are not the words that would come out of my mouth, I guarantee you that. If that’s their way of saying thank you coach, can you imagine if we applied that thank you gesture to other situations? How about your Grandmother after she made a huge Thanksgiving meal? Would you run sneaking up behind her and dump a cooler full of freezing cold Gatorade down her neck when she wasn’t looking as a way of saying great job? How do you think poor Grandma would react to that? Full cardiac arrest probably. I imagine she wouldn’t be laughing anyways. You might want to not be within reach of her backhand she perfected throughout her life. The “lucky” winning coach now has a cold, soaking wet shirt, jacket, pants, socks, shoes and underwear for the rest of the night through all the history making interviews played for all eternity, courtesy of his laughing team. That’s the thanks he gets from his team that he just coached to the pinnacle of their careers. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate because I’d be plotting my revenge in the form of a shaken champagne bottle spraying straight into their faces, which is yet another sports favorite celebration. I’d be slightly distracted by how uncomfortable I was trying to walk the length of a football field with wet jeans and liquid filled sneakers as I tried to form a clear thought in my head while freezing to death. Regardless, hats off to coaches who can take a practical joke in stride, and to all the die-hard fans out there who support their team no matter what!