The Problem of the Underdog

A warning: this is partially a filler blog. Since I've undertaken this assignment to write a blog a day for a month, I've quickly recognized how difficult it is. Every morning requires a mind strong enough for deep insights that lead me to self-publish. No one is making me do this. If I have a shit writing day no one should have to see it. But I'm forcing it upon the world (or my readership of four) anyway. The month before my wedding, I decided I had to--had to--run a half-marathon before I became a married woman, a sort of self-created rite of passage. There were no half-marathons in the area but I trained for one anyway and, goddamnit, I ran the 13.1 on a treadmill the Wednesday before the wedding. In life I decide to do a lot of things and don't complete nearly as many of them as I'd like, but it's as if there's some switch in my belly that springs on if I say the words I've decided in a particular tone: the guttural, even, deadly tone. Instantly I know whatever thing it is I plan to do will happen--it must. The same thing goes for this blog, and those two months in college when I decided I'd neither wash my hair nor shave. It will happen. I've decided.

Today is what many might assume a big football day for me: LSU v. Alabama. This game is so mega-hyped right now there's a link on Huffington Post reminding national readers what a kick-ass game this will be: view Saban as Savior or Saban as Satan. LSU fans have dubbed this Saban Bowl 3, and people around town here are equally ass-clenched, so understandably the perennial question on friends' and students' tongues has been, "Who are you going to root for?"

This clearly is an unanswerable question. I owe allegiance both to my alma mater and the school that currently butters my bread. It feels an affront to even have to answer this question because I strongly feel Brock and I brought success to Alabama football when we moved here in 2008; there's no denying football greatness follows us wherever we go. LSU won a national championship while I was a student, came hella close when I taught there, and as soon as we came to Alabama they were ranked #1, and this year they seem really likely to go all the way. So why am I not swooning over the pressure of Sophie's choice?

Here's the thing: I'm not the best sports fan in the world. If there's such a thing as being too dumb to be a cheerleader, that's me. It's not that I'm apathetic towards the games, or that I don't understand the difference between pass interference and holding (thanks to Brock, now I do). The problem is that in any sports situation under the sun, I will root for the underdog.

Monday night I was running at the gym, watching the Saints versus the Falcons while listening to Enimem. There is something eminently beautiful about listening to the white boy say he's gonna take Sarah Palin out to dinner and then nail her while simultaneously watching Jeremy Shockey nail some receiver into the Superdome turf. I was fist-pumping while running, Shockey was nailing, Sarah was getting nailed. It was outstanding. But I became concerned when the Saints got a little carried away with their winning. Two minutes from the half they were up 28-14, which is not a sizable lead by a long shot in the NFL--especially when we're talking about the Saints--and I would've gone into the half feeling real proud of our boys if it weren't for the long camera shot at Falcons head coach Mike Brown. He looked close to tears, real genuine upset tears. Brown squinted, blinking them away. I melted.

I got so sad I stopped running and instinctually thought, "We're ahead by so much! Why can't we allow them a tiny safety or field goal before the half? What could it hurt?"

(If you watched the game you know that the second half was a lot different than the first--it was a nail biter right up to the last second, because the fucking Falcons recovered their onside kick like the talented assholes they are and nearly came back to score the winning touchdown.)

The good thing about this perpetual rooting for the underdog thing is it's proof I'm a bleeding-heart, warm and fuzzy liberal-minded lovely empathetic person. The problem is it makes me a dumb liberal.

Real fans know loyalty to a team, and when said team is the lowest loser in the league the true fan never gives up hope, and if the team is lucky and talented enough to be on a hot streak true fans never surrender their merciless yearning to win. This instinct reminds me of the great longtime Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, who at the heart of his rivalry with Michigan, won one of the team's season closing games by an enormous amount of points, something like forty. In the fourth quarter of that game, when Ohio State was up by so much Michigan had all but given up, having just surrendered yet another Buckeyes touchdown, Hayes decided to go for the ultra-tricky two extra points rather than easily kick the one extra point. Of course the Buckeyes made their two. After the game Hayes was asked by reporters why he decided to go for the extra two points when the win was already his. He responded, "Because they wouldn't let me go for three." That's not only the embodiment of insanely cutthroat coaching, but it's also representative of what real fans feel in the heat of the game. Grind their noses in the dirt. Kill 'em. Send 'em home bleeding and crying for their mammas.

This may be tangential, but I have to end by commenting on how alike my mother and father are in respect of being true sports fans. In no other way have I seen an alignment in their personalities or mannerisms or ways of speaking or thinking, so much so that I've often wondered how the hell they got together in the first place. (Then I remember they were super-young and horny, and that Lala hated Roy thus Rosita had to have and keep him, and he was smart enough to be emotionally abusive in a charming way: "Every woman adores a Fascist, / The boot in the face, the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you." For instance, Roy met Rosita while they were both working at Maison Blanche. She in the women's department, he in the men's. One day in spring he approached her for help because he wanted to buy a dress for his mom, as Mother's Day was just around the corner. Sweet, thought Rosita. She asked him what style his mother might be interested in, what size she wore. "Tent sized," said Roy. Hilarious, thought Rosita. She couldn't imagine a day when his acerbic language could be used to malign her.)

My dad is a psychotic sports fan. He curses in every sentence, spittles over every word. Those goddamn fucking good-for-nothin cock-suckin Saints. Just now I didn't even have to think of those words as I typed, because they were part of the litany of every weekend of my childhood. (And as for anyone who has a problem with my own foul language, forgive me. As you can see it's my cultural legacy--my dad's Sicilian, which means he also necessarily falls into the subcategories of alcoholic and uncouth. I'll give you his number if you want.) But don't think his profanity is that of blind fury, no. He'd walk around reading the paper as he watched the game, reading the analysis and (usually) disagreeing with it and watching it said by announcers pre-game, halftime, post-game. By knowing what others had to say about the team and game and synthesizing it with his own natural propensity to loathe the mediocre, his hateful spewing always carried an air of truth. So the Saints's fucking good-for-nothing quality had something to do specifically with Bobby Hebert's perpetual fear of being hit, his inability to connect to receivers, the sudden lack of fear during 3rd and 10 passes which usually led to interceptions. That fucker.

Rosita doesn't behave so analytically or profanely. She's just a real fan comprised of all sound and no sense. She knows exactly what's going on during every play and if something doesn't pan out right she'll lose it in a barrage of "Wh-wh-whaaaa's" and "Oooooh-nooooooos." Her brand of rooting involves the arms akimbo, high kicks, Rudy Huxtable end zone dance--fingers in the air, knees in and out. In other words, she's a big dork. But also super-loveable because she really means it. The woman finds ecstasy in the act of one man catching a ball thrown by another and running blithely with it across a green field. Right now I can't think of the things I find ecstasy in (maybe just loving deeply books and people), but the toss and catch of football isn't one of them.

So we're going to watch a game with friends today and I'll use whiskey and food to anesthetize myself to the question of who we'll be rooting for. I cannot possibly offer the only answer that's true: that I'll be rooting for whoever is losing. I'm sure all the other dumb liberals of the world will simpathize with my plight. It's all I know how to do.

Unless we're talking politics. The House better damned well pass that health care bill today, goddammit. I don't care what the disgusting underdog wants, it's time to get this reform going, and I mean it. Their sad and sparse teabag parties don't make me pity them a bit--it's time to see the bigots and CEO apologists and hinderers of progress and the sub-Mason-Dixon wing of the Republican Party (i.e. all of it) go down.

Seriously, if the nation stood up tomorrow, all 300+ million of us, and in one resounding voice called Sarah Palin a Beloved Cunt, I might not stand up and bellow along but I certainly wouldn't defend her. With the whole world against her, I'd go ahead and elect Eminem into office before her any day.