I’m not a sports guy. I’m actually the editor of opinions, so this is the journalistic equivalent of a crossover episode. That gives me a unique position to represent the layman — the casual enjoyer of sports — amid a sea of many, many people who are more qualified than me to be talking about sports.
I’ll list my qualifications: I tend to watch the occasional Illini game on the TV if my roommates happen to be watching it, and sometimes I’ll even see the games in person. I also enjoy our sports section’s live-tweet coverage of the games and deeply enjoy reposting our losses with a snide comment.
I have one opinion about sports.
Despite our embarrassing performance in the realm of football this season, and our sometimes inconsistent strategy in basketball, I will always be an Illini fan. It’s not just sports at the University — any Illinoisan knows that our Chicago teams have an equally terrible record.
Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf referred to 2023 as a nightmare for the Sox, but that same maxim can be applied to all of Chicago sports. Chicago Tribune columnist Paul Sullivan wrote, “this could be the worst collective year for our teams since 1988.” Sullivan’s retrospective on the matter is compelling and probably more eloquent than mine.
In the spirit of fairness to our Alma Mater and many of our hometowns, you could think about 2023 as a transitory, liminal kind of year, setting the stage for stronger team compositions in the near future.
Like the Windy City’s bear and bull markets — which the imagery of the Bears and Bulls evokes —, the story of sports is one that ebbs and flows, with new blood coming in. Our teams will have phases of incredible performance and less-than-stellar performance all the same. And if you’ve heard the idea that the best investors are dead, it’s just as valuable to support your teams with unflinching loyalty.
It’s more fun that way.
I recall a lecture from high school drama class — I’m definitely not a sports guy — where my teacher told us about what makes a conflict compelling in a story, using the example of a football game to talk about story structure. If you’re watching a total blowout and the score is 40-10 and you’re in the fourth quarter, the conflict has been resolved. There’s no reason to keep watching other than to behold pure carnage.
That’s great news for a winning team and bad news for the losers. But who’s really having fun? Carnage gets boring after a while. And yeah, it’s really fun to watch two incredible teams duke it out — there’s no question about that. These games are intense and capture the whole nation’s eyes to see who the greats really are.
But I offer a different kind of mindset. I think the Goldilocks Zone of sports enjoyment is when both teams exist in a realm of equilibrium mediocrity, where you’re cursing your team for making mistakes, breathing sighs of relief at the opponent’s mistakes, and the game is down to the wire. My friend Said lovingly called these “Battles of Suckage” and I happen to enjoy them the most.
There are way more mediocre teams than there are outright bad teams and very good teams. Maybe my enjoyment of “Battles of Suckage” is a coping mechanism for the fact that Illinois teams are generally privy to suckage.
I can’t say for sure. I was very disappointed when we surrendered our Land of Lincoln trophy to the Wildcats, who seemingly became fearsome competitors overnight. So much for collective Illinois suckage — must be the orange and navy blue.
Just kidding. I like our colors.
Really, for a lot of us, the reason we support our teams is because they’re associated with the places we grew up in. As somebody who grew up in Chicagoland, of course I back the Bears and the Bulls. Of course my middle school played “Go Cubs Go” over the intercom when they won the World Series in 2016. Of course the University of Illinois was on the very top of my list of colleges I would be applying to.
Your hometown is like family — you don’t often get to choose it. Similarly, your hometown team is like family — expect disappointment. But we Chicagoans are a hardy people, able to brave even the polar-est of polar vortexes.
So why the hell do some of us root for the Green Bay Packers instead?
Raphael is a sophomore in LAS.
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