A daring columnist ‘sticking’ with it

I have recently come to the conclusion that there aren’t enough sports in my life.
As a college student, I regularly watch four hours worth of SportsCenter every morning just to watch the top ten plays four times. Web sites I have favored exclude just about anything non-sports related. All of my heroes wear their names on the back of their jerseys. I one time even skipped a class to read the minute-by-minute notes of a soccer game for a team I didn’t even like.

Still, it isn’t enough.

I don’t know exactly when I came to this conclusion, but I think it’s been growing on me steadily my entire life. Once upon a time I was a one-sport guy. From April to September (but not October, the woes of a Mariner’s fan) I lived for America’s favorite pastime, baseball. Gradually, I needed something to fill the hole in my life over the winter months and so forth came football, America’s other favorite pastime. But it still wasn’t enough. I experimented with basketball for a few years but never committed. Then, while studying abroad, I found myself immersed in the cult of soccer, everyone-but-America’s favorite pasttime.

The decision to include soccer in my life paid immediate dividends. It made for talking points with random strangers. It expanded the list of useless things I could Wikipedia to almost infinite reach. But, most importantly, it gave me something else to superficially be pissed off about on a daily basis.

Still, it isn’t enough.

Recently, I gave up my grudge against the Olympics to watch a little known sport called ice hockey. For the uninitiated, ice hockey is a sport where grown men skate around and smack a small, circular disk with sticks. Oftentimes they crash into each other. Oftentimes tempers flair. Oftentimes it’s awesome.

I’m kind of surprised I’ve never really gotten into hockey before. It’s the only sport in the world where fighting isn’t just permitted, it’s practically encouraged. Teams even carry members called “enforcers” whose sole purpose is to pick fights with opponents. This may sound incredibly stupid but it’s actually really sweet. It’s kind of like the WWE on ice.
But hockey is more than just aggression and fighting. It’s a fast-paced game that requires you to almost always be on the edge of your seat. I practically chewed my nails down to the bone while watching USA beat Canada 5-3, finally breathing a sigh of relief when Ryan Kessler found the empty net in the final minute to give the good guys a two goal lead. Introductions to a sport don’t get much better then that.

Best of all, hockey has it’s own league that runs around this time of the year. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called the NHL, it picks back up this week and might have just picked up a new fan.

But cheering for a sport isn’t the same if you don’t have a team. There’s many ways to decide which team will yearly crush your soul, rob your time, piss you off and maybe, occasionally, delight you (again, the woes of a Mariner’s fan). It isn’t something you can just pick out of a hat. It requires research, concentration, alcohol – not unlike the bidding process for the World Cup.

Some people go with geography but that’s too easy. Some people just like a logo and color and those people are idiots. There’s a lot that goes into a picking a team, and not all of it makes sense. In the end picking a team isn’t really picking one at all. The right team finds you and once you’re in love, there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

My great NHL adventure awaits me. I admit I know nothing but I’m willing to learn. By the end of this NHL season, I will know hockey inside and out. I will have set up my fantasy team. I will spend four hours debating on the merits of preventing subbing players during an icing. I will break dinner plans to watch Hockey Night in Canada.

And, more importantly, I’ll have my very own hockey team to cherish obsessively.


Brian Anderson can be contacted at banderson@keeneequinox.com