Confessions of a Sports Addict
Hi…my name is Dave and I am a sports addict. According to my parents, my addiction started at four years old when I was reading the sports page and memorizing the statistics of all the Atlanta Falcons. Now I don’t remember much of what happened at four, so even I am a bit skeptical about my parents claim that I was reading, much less the sports page (you know how proud parents can be). However, I have had this verified by their friends so I believe it to be true.
My addiction continued even after my personal athletic peak at 12 years old. After 12, I realized that I would never play in a Super Bowl, World Series or NBA Finals. However, I must say there is still part of me that thinks I just grew up in the wrong country and maybe I would have been an Olympic Gold Medalist ski jumper or curler if I had been playing those my whole life.
Unfortunately, I have many vices but I have to think my sports addiction affects my life more than anything else. Recently, I was thinking back about my life as a sports fan and wanted to verify if I was truly an “addict” or just fanatical about sports. First I thought about the 10 greatest moments of my life and wanted to see how many of them were related to sports. Here they are in no particular order:
· Morton Andersen kicking the game winning field goal to send the Falcons to the Super Bowl in 1998.
· Starting the Tomahawk Chop at an Atlanta Braves game in 1991. Don’t worry, no one else believes it either, but on my daughter’s life, I swear it is true.
· Singing the Eyes of Texas in the Rose Bowl after Vince’s touchdown run against USC to win the National Championship.
· Stealing home to win the game when I was 7 years old in Little League. They called me “Crazy Legs” Paul in the Morgan Falls weekly newsletter.
· Francisco Cabrera’s game winning hit to lead the Braves past the Pirates in the NLCS in 1992.
· Being at Reunion Arena and watching the Dallas Stars finally exorcise their demons and beating the hated Avalanche in 1999.
· Taking a picture with AC/DC’s Angus Young while we are both holding up devil horns over our heads a la the Highway to Hell cover.
· Losing my virginity
· My wedding.
· The birth of my child
So there it is. 7 of the 10 greatest moments of my life had something to do with sports. Actually, the last two are debatable but I didn’t want my wife to cut me off for the next three months so I had to throw those in there.
So I figured it was time to scour the internet and determine if I was clinically a sports addict. My search took me to addictions.com to find out if my symptoms qualified me as an addict. Here are the symptoms of addiction and my findings:
Symptom #1: Extreme mood changes – happy, sad, excited, anxious, etc
Most people who know me would say I am a bit of a hard-ass, somewhat insensitive and have never seen me cry. I have had four different grandparents pass away, a family dog die and relationships end. Although all of these things made me sad, they usually don’t bring me to tears. Let me give you three pathetic examples of sports movies I can name off the top of my head that make me look like a chick at the end of Steel Magnolias.
1. Anytime I watch Rudy make the sack on the final play in “Rudy”. I have probably seen this movie 100 times. I can turn it on at the beginning, middle or end, but two things are for certain….first, I will watch it until the end and second, I will cry like a bitch. Is there something wrong with this? Maybe. But if you are a dude and you don’t cry at about 5 points during this movie (when the Notre Dame players turn in their jerseys for Rudy, when the crowd chants “Rudy, Rudy, Rudy”, etc.) I don’t think I can be friends with you.
2. When Ollie hits the game winning free throw in Hoosiers. Not only do I cry when he hits the free throw, tears will start welling up in my eyes about 30 seconds before he gets to the foul line just knowing it is going to happen. “Didn’t know they grew em’ so small down on the farm”. Oh yeah? Here’s a couple of underhanded free throws for you, so take your lame ass back to Deerlick or wherever you come from!
3. Here’s the topper…I cry when Daniel Larusso goes into his infamous crane stance and wins the All Valley Karate Tournament. Partly it is because Daniel is the ultimate underdog, but mostly it is because he kicks all-time 80’s movie a**hole Billy Zabka in the face. Whether he was playing Johnny Lawrence in Karate Kid, Greg Tolan in Just One of the Guys or Chas in Back to School, Zabka was portrayed as the typical blonde, popular American high school douchebag who needed a good asskicking and on that day, one of the great American actors of all time (or at least of 1984), Ralph Macchio had the honors.
Symptom #2: Sleeping a lot more or less than usual, or at different times of day or night
Hmmm…lets see..it’s currently 3:15am and I am watching the replay of the LA Kings vs Vancouver Canucks. On Saturday I woke up at 6:45am on three hours sleep to watch Manchester United knock off Manchester City. So yeah, I guess I qualify.
Symptom #3 - Weight loss or weight gain
I would say my weight varies by about 10 pounds during the fall and summer. The difference? Football. You think sitting on a couch or at Pluckers for 25 hours over the course of a weekend isn’t healthy? Try compounding that with the fact that I have to drink beer to calm my nerves if the Horns, Bulldogs or Falcons are playing. Then more beer to chill me out if I have a bet on a game that is on tv, which only happens about 21 times during a football weekend. Those 6000 calorie days definitely don’t help keep the lb’s off.
Symptom #4 – Destroying relationships because of your addiction
In college I was dating a girl for a few months that I really liked. Everything was too perfect…she was cute, sweet and we got along all the time. Then, football season came around. A couple of weeks into football season she told me that I had to make a choice each Saturday and choose between watching the Horns and the Dawgs because she wanted us to spend more time together on the weekend. So I called my mom and asked her opinion (see mom I actually do care about your opinion sometimes).
As a woman, you would have expected her to tell me to make a compromise for the girl…maybe watch some football, hang out with her a little, then watch some more football. Luckily my mom knows me better than that and she told me “Dave, I have known you since you were born. You may think you love that girl right now, but any girl that won’t let you watch football, will never be someone you can spend your life with”. It was great advice and I took it. Three days later, we broke up.
Symptom #5 - Seeming unwell at certain times, and better at other times
I feel bad for most women. The truth is that no matter how much you think you love shopping, puppies, men or whatever else you do for fun, you will never, ever love anything as much as a guy loves sports. Women are just entirely too rational to understand a man’s feeling about his favorite team. Here is a typical conversation I have with my wife about when one of my favorite teams loses:
Mrs. Plucker: Why do you let the (insert team name here) loss affect you all day or all week? It isn’t like you had any control over the outcome.
Me: Please leave me alone and let me be miserable.
Mrs. Plucker: Come on, you can’t really be that miserable over a stupid game!
Me: Not only will I be miserable today, but you can expect me not to want to talk to anyone for the next three days. If you are lucky enough that I acknowledge your existence over these three days, please realize that I didn’t take this loss as badly as some losses. In these cases I will not want to be social for at least one week.
Mrs. Plucker: Well please explain to me why you feel this way?
Me: Here is $100, please go shopping.
The reality is that most men can’t explain to you why we are so happy when our team wins and why we are so upset when they lose so stop trying to make us!
Symptom #6 – Making yourself believe in things that do not exist.
In my 37 years on this earth, I still have not truly determined if I believe in any one God, Allah, Jesus, or whatever each religion calls their god. You see, these gods rarely manifest themselves in everyday life. However, I have empirical proof that some gods do exist. These are the gambling gods and the sports gods. These gods are more powerful than any god you may worship. You see, you may ask your god for something in your life and occasionally he or she will acknowledge your measly presence. However, the gambling gods and sports gods absolutely have rules and if you break these rules, you are doomed to accept whatever fate they have for you. Here are just a few irrefutable rules of the gambling gods and sports gods.
Rule #1: If you ever mention in passing to a friend that your team is playing well, your team will inevitably lose. That’s just how it works. Sometimes, you can use phrases that acknowledge these gods and they will accept your compliment of your team, but only if it is tied to something pessimistic. For instance, if you say “Damn the Horns looks great tonight!”, you have singlehandedly just cost Texas a win. Now if you say something like, “Although the Horns look great tonight, I am sure they will blow it in the end”, you are acknowledging to the gods that you respect them and this will not cause an inevitable loss.
Rule #2: Never mention to a friend which games you have money on. I have been betting on football since I was 13 years old and I am pretty good at it. However it isn’t that I watch more football or know more football than the average guy, it is because I respect the gambling gods. I have had to learn this the hard way. My friends say I am prone to hyperbole (and this may be true), but when I say I have never, ever won a game that I have openly admitted to gambling on, please believe me. We are talking hundreds of games here folks. This can’t be a mere coincidence.
For instance, this year I had Indiana +17 against Iowa. That means that Indiana only needs to lose by less than 17 points for me to win my bet. With 7:23 left in the 3rd quarter, the score is Indiana 21 – 7 and Indiana is driving to score again on the Iowa 20. I am covering the game by 31 points, with the ball and less than 23 minutes left in the game. Being an idiot I call my friend that also has money on the game and we start talking about how smart we were, how we knew Iowa was primed for a letdown and just in general how great life is. BAM! Iowa returns an interception for a touchdown.
No problem, Indiana gets the ball back, drive, kicks a field goal and then is driving again and I am now up 28 points for my bet with 13 minutes in the game. There is no way Indiana cannot cover. I am talking “no way” as in the “no way” you will ever win the lottery. We are talking 20 gazillion to 1 that they don’t cover. Needless to say, over the next 13 minutes the gambling gods literally pull out my heart and stomp on it for my transgression and Indiana misses the cover by 1 point. Some people may think that Iowa started playing better or that Indiana choked the game away. I know the truth….it was my fault for talking about my bet. Sorry Hoosiers, I owe you one.
Rule #3: Always be pessimistic about the team you are rooting for. Many of my friends can’t stand watching games with me. I will never give my team any credit. I am always waiting for the worst to happen…and you know what? It helps my team to victory. You see, the gambling and sports gods respect a man that will publicly make himself and everyone around him miserable in respect of their aura.
Conclusion
After looking at all of the evidence, I have concluded that I am a sports addict. For many addicts, recognizing that they have a problem is the first step in the rehabilitation process. Unfortunately for my friends and family, I would rather meet an early surmise than to give up my addiction (hey that’s another symptom of an addict!). As for you, the Pluckers guest, please know that I will dedicate the rest of my life to making sure that Pluckers is the best place for other addicts to meet and commiserate. Whether it is adding more sports programming, more plasmas or whatever is necessary to feed your addiction, I am here for you. Screw it, following the 12 Steps are for quitters anyways.
