Sports can just suck donkey dong

How bad is it, Antonio?

Ah, well, you see, I recently decided to check out of politics completely. I don't want to think about it. American politics is a waste of time. I am not going to influence anything anyone does. I'd love to think of myself as grand enough to shape events, but I can't, and I never will. I've wasted my life so much that I won't ever be important enough to directly influence the political landscape.

It wasn't just my own ineffectual reality that did me in, however--I wouldn't want you to think that up until that point I fancied myself so important. It was the realisation that people in the USA are childish and stupid and our politics are arrested in some state of permanent adolescence. I'm done with it. People are childish and so easily manipulated, and the negative thoughts I would routinely experience because of this were seeping into my daily routine. I want to think good thoughts (not necessarily "happy" thoughts, mind) positive thoughts, because I have seen that those thoughts influence my life. I cleanse myself of pessimism. I renounce negativity.

I have decided that the best, and for that matter the MOST I can do is try to do the right thing in my small space of the world. I cannot say what is the best thing I can do FOR you or TO you; but I can say that I will try to organise my actions in such a way that they cause you no harm.

I gave up the morning NPR listening because of the negative and frustrating thoughts that would be made manifest each day. In its place I listen to "Mike & Mike in the Morning." Even that can occasionally bug me but I don't see lives in the balance when I hear how wonderful Mr. American Football is.

Sport, you see, can be the cheery little diversion until the sides with whom you've invested yourself become stricken with some sort of disorder. I don't believe we choose the clubs or schools we follow; rather, they choose us.

Arsenal, then, chose me some 14 years ago. This was pre-Wenger, pre-doubles, pre-Invincibles; Bruce Rioch was the manager. So what happened? Was I spoilt by the success Wenger brought? Did experiencing the success of Bobby Bowden's FSU teams in the 1990s ruin me? Would I spend all the years after Leeman Bennett coached the Falcons wishing they were good again? Will I ever get past the success the Braves had for 14 straight seasons? How long did I miss "Atlanta's Air Force" after the Fratello years with the Hawks?

And so that brings me to the team that rescued me during my 1992 divorce from a mentally ill woman--I speak of the University of Massachusetts Men's Basketball team. I did not know that it had been 31 years between appearances in the NCAA tournament for UMass. I did not know the coach was John Calipari. I didn't know the players or the history. What I knew was that one Sunday afternoon in March 1992, I went into my office at City Hall in Atlanta and watched the tournament, long my favourite sporting event in America. And I knew that I hated Syracuse, and I got to see UMass beat Syracuse in an amazing and dramatic fashion, and the players were elated and that was that--as the Christ might have extended his hand and told me to follow, UMass bade me to become a disciple. And there is no devotion quite like that of the convert.

There followed 4 more years of glory and drama, and then the decade of agony. There is agony now with the team in yet another rebuilding year. UMass and Arsenal are perpetually getting ready for the next campaign, and they are probably the two teams with which I am most invested. And for some reason, they are the teams which seem to experience the most angst.

They are not able to solve their problems. They cannot find the resources to compete. They make poor choices with personnel or their personnel make poor choices. Good players go bad or have weaknesses exposed before the entire world. And above all else--and this is truly the way I can tell that the clubs chose me, and not the other way 'round--their supporters are in an eternal state of overwrought emotion.

My support for these dysfunctional clubs stands in contrast to the simultaneous success of those which I despise. It's not West Ham United or Fulham who top the league table, it's Chelsea and ManU. It's not NC-Charlotte or Duquesne running roughshod over the A10, it's once again Temple. The Atlanta Falcons most bitter rivals, the Saints, are "enjoying a magical season." Oh who gives a right proper f***?

Even when I reject politics, sport seem to provide no refuge. Maybe it really is all about "Family Guy."