Sports away

Sports are a big part of my life, that should go without saying. But I didn't realize just how big until I didn't have time for them anymore.

A year and a half ago, when I was thinking about starting a blog, the decision to make it a sports blog seemed a no-brainer. Sports were what I spent my free time doing -- whether playing, watching, or reading about. I am that girl that carries her bracket, and a highlighter, to the bar with her in March. I'm the girl who can't make plans on Saturdays during autumn, 'cause I already know I'm going to be somewhere in front of a TV. I'm the girl who counts down the days until the World Cup kicks off, whose chosen way to spend Friday nights in college was attending UF women's soccer matches, who studied abroad during Europameisterschaft 2008 and would make dedicated trips to the computer lab on campus so I could log on to ESPN.com and read up on the German team's injury reports.

When I joined Twitter, I first and foremost followed sportswriters. I used the service almost exclusively in the early years as a source of news regarding my beloved Gators. The first time I was retweeted by a major personality (Mark Schlabach) it made my week, and the moment I knew Twitter as a platform was something special was the day Lane Kiffin announced he was leaving Tennessee. Footage of the student riot that erupted outside the Vols' athletic complex went viral after a UT basketball player posted a video he'd taken from his dorm room window, and I realized the talk about us all being citizen journalists now was more than just a platitude.

A year and a half ago I told my roommate I was thinking about starting a blog, and she laughed at the suggestion that I might choose to write about anything but sports. She'd sat through enough afternoons of me breaking down college football rivalries for hours at a time to know that this was the thing I was most passionate about in the world.

But something strange happened over the last year -- namely, I became a speechwriter, and then a pollster, and now a commentator on political issues. I started following researchers and politicos on Twitter instead of coaches and athletes. I started reading eleven newspapers a day, none of them SI. And I started writing op-eds about politics instead of blog posts about sports.

It turns out I don't have the energy to be obsessed with two things at once. I realized that last Thursday, as I settled in to watch the college football season opener -- an SEC matchup, no less! -- and ended up switching over to CSPAN after half an hour. See, the Republican National Convention was happening contemporaneously, and I couldn't stand not having it on. Even if it meant not watching the game I'd been waiting for all summer.

I fully expect this to be a temporary change. Presidential elections don't come along every season, after all. But the fact that this blog lay dormant through the Olympics and the Stanley Cup and Euro 2012 says something. I've wanted to write -- about the Penn State sanctions, about Team USA's soccer gold, about my undying hatred for the Boston Bruins. I've wanted to write, and yet I haven't. Other things came up.

I guess my love for sports is undiminished. My time for them is not.

An ode to Madness and moments that shine

The one shining moment when CBS plays "One Shining Moment" at the end of each NCAA basketball tournament is among my very favorite three minutes of the entire year. It never fails to make me giggle, smile, get choked up and generally act like a goon. I know a lot of sports fans who roll their eyes at it or laugh it off as cheesy tradition. I couldn't disagree with them more.

What makes the song-and-video montage so powerful for me, I think, is the way it serves as a tiny microcosm of the Dance itself. By weaving together highlights from the preceding three and a half weeks of Madness, it lets you relive the most magical parts of the 60+ games you just experienced. It walks you through the journey you just took. It tells the story of the season you just saw arrive at a stunning conclusion.

For me, "One Shining Moment" captures the essence of what I adore about the tournament: that it's self-encapsulating. Start to finish it spans less than a month, yet it offers the same narrative arc you'd find in a great epic tale: a field of worthy competitors going to battle; one by one they fall; Cinderellas emerge to steal the country's heart; Davids take on Goliaths; outcomes surprise us; good doesn't always defeat evil; teams rise to overcome or crumble under the weight of the obstacles they encounter, thereby in all cases revealing their true mettle. Heartbreak follows euphoria follows heartbreak...

A big part of the reason it's such a thrill to watch basketball teams that aren't yours do battle, of course, comes from the custom of predicting the results ahead of time. I doubt we'd find the whole thing nearly as compelling if we didn't each have a bit of our pride and ego on the line. I never fail to feel conflicted when, as happened this year, a highly-ranked team I have going all the way looks like it's about to be taken down by a 14- or 15- or 16-seed nobody. Which do you want more -- an amazing upset or your bracket not to go kaboom? The rush of emotions that barrage serious tournament watchers is just not easy to compete with. We wouldn't be watching if it were.

This season was a little different for me, however. I hardly got to watch any of the games, due mostly to the traveling I've been doing for work and a number of social engagements I unthinkingly committed myself to. I squeezed in as much of the tourney as I could, but in the end I wasn't even able to sit down and enjoy the championship (and I never miss a championship). As a result, I didn't get my fix of "One Shining Moment" glory I so look forward to every year.

When, a few days later, I got around to pulling it up on YouTube, I didn't have high expectations. I figured that without having experienced the tournament itself, the video of clips pieced together wouldn't move me much. And what I found was that I didn't remember most of what I was seeing. In previous years, there'd be an amazing dunk or block or fun few seconds of a coach pumping up his team, and I'd know precisely where I was when it had happened live. This time around, a lot of what I was looking at was foreign.

You know what? It didn't matter.

That video gave me goosebumps like you would not believe. I laughed and whimpered and lost myself in the story that unfolded, and at the end I was on fire with happiness for Kentucky -- and admiration for what, I'm continually reminded, sports have the capacity to do to us.

Life worth living

In the book Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, author Robert Fulghum shares the story of Charles Boyer, a handsome and successful silver screen actor. On camera, he was a lover to many beautiful women. In reality, he was a faithful husband to his wife Patricia for 44 years until she died of liver cancer in his arms. Two days later, he took his own life, saying he did not want to live without her.

I don't know how I would handle my grief in similar circumstances. ... But there are moments when I look across the room—amid the daily ordinariness of life—and see the person I call my wife and friend and companion. And I understand why Charles Boyer did what he did. It really is possible to love someone that much. I know. I'm certain of it.

I wonder if it's a coincidence, a product of our romantic imaginations, that so often elderly couples seem to pass within short order of each other. As if they derive strength from one another's presence, as if it literally is too much for them to go on without their partners. I wonder if there's some other explanation for that pattern, or if it's one of those we see because we want to that isn't really there.

My grandmother survived five weeks after the death of her husband of 60 years. He was a remarkable man, a World War II veteran and Harvard Law School grad who went on to serve as a JAG attorney for more than three decades. She a was a faithful Army spouse who raised my father to be the person I most admire in this world. When my grandfather's health began to decline, when it began to look like he was near the end, something happened to the otherwise healthy woman that was his wife. Her heart stopped working; her health declined with his. She was admitted to the same hospital where he was being treated, and they were able to share a room, their beds wheeled right up next to each other. She was holding his hand when his heart beat for the last time.

She lived long enough to see him given a proper military burial, one of the most moving and meaningful experiences I've personally ever had. Soldiers in attendance played Taps and presented her with the flag that draped his coffin. I remember her crying quietly—she never liked to be the center of attention.

That was July. By August, she had passed away herself.

I suspect there's more than happenstance accounting for situations like the one I just described. I think it might be possible to love so deeply that it alone sustains you, that without it, an already weakened person can find himself physically unable to go on.

I think we saw it happen these past three months with Joe Paterno.

One could argue he'd have died this morning regardless. His health has been flagging for some years, and his cancer diagnosis will undoubtedly be recorded as the official cause of death.

But it would be an unusual onlooker who didn't wonder fleetingly, at least, weather the ordeal he experienced last November didn't quicken this day's coming. That the man who lived and breathed for Penn State football was crushed, completely, when it was taken from him can't possibly be disputed. It seems only a few steps further to think that perhaps that heartbreak reduced his will to fight sufficiently to allow the illness to defeat him... that perhaps the scandal and subsequent firing themselves left him defeated.

I can't say he'd still be here if not for Jerry Sandusky. But I feel sure the list of lives the latter damaged doesn't just end with his victims'.

Requiescat in pace, JoePa.

A note about this weekend

This has been one of my favorite weekends for college football, ever -- and I say that despite the fact the Florida spent the first twenty-seven minutes of yesterday's game trailing Furman by as many as 15 points.

Something I've missed desperately in the two and a half years since I left UF is the fervor surrounding college football in the South. People in D.C. just don't get excited for it the way the Gator Nation does. This is Skins Country, it's Caps country, it's ACC basketball country, but it isn't college football country. Sure, you have your Terps and Hokies fans, the occasional overly enthusiastic West Virginia grad -- but college football isn't the dominant event of every weekend for most Washingtonians the way it is for me.

But you wouldn't have been able to tell that from last night.

This just happened to be my twenty-fifth birthday weekend, so I was in the basement of a dingily spectacular Capitol Hill bar with twenty to thirty friends when it all went down.

Florida State losing to UVA. Oregon falling to Southern Cal. Oklahoma getting stunned by Baylor. All on top of Clemson and Okla State already having been upset.

Fever pitch. Insanity. Jumping up and down. Hugging and cheering. My dear friend Thomas, a long-time Ducks fan, crumbling to the ground with wails of "Nooooo!" Wide-eyed staring at each other with looks that clearly said, "What could happen next?" For the first time in years, I found myself with people who truly cared about what was happening on those screens. We grabbed one another, running through all the feasible outcomes from the weekend, reasoning our way through every option, trying to guess who would end up in the BCS championship game. Could Virginia Tech somehow do it, after an entire season of being overlooked? (I love the idea, by the way, of the SEC -- already having dispensed with teams from the Big 12, the Pac 10 and the Big 10 on its way to winning five straight national titles -- getting a chance to round things out by beating an ACC school, too.) Did the improbable happenings of Saturday night void Oklahoma State's seemingly crippling loss on Friday, creating exactly the circumstances needed for them to be able to claw their way back to No. 2? What if Auburn beats Bama next week? What if it doesn't? What if Georgia pulls out the win in Atlanta? Is there a role for Houston in all of this? Have all the pieces aligned just so, such that we'll actually see a rematch of the "Game of the Century" from Nov. 5? And who the heck is Robert Griffin III?

What an evening of wonderful, magical chaos.

I have no idea what is going to happen, and neither do any of you. Because with LSU having to face No. 3 (I'm assuming) Arkansas on Friday, and the Iron Bowl still to come, anything could happen. Anything at all. I highly doubt this season's handed us its last surprise. Which is, of course, what makes sports so much fun in the first place.

I can't freaking wait to watch the next few weeks play out.

On the tragedy at Penn State

I want to be outraged over the scandal unfolding in State College, PA. What happened there, if the charges are true, was a tragedy of unthinkable proportions.

I want to feel betrayed by Joe Paterno. I want to be pissed at him and join the masses calling for his head, not just his job. I want to feel those things. But I can’t.

I’m utterly in denial.

I’m not among those who think the school made a mistake by firing their long-time head coach Wednesday night. I understand why it was done, and I believe it was right that it end that way, given everything we know. But my emotional blinders simply won’t let me believe Joe Paterno could have done the things people are saying. That at best he turned a blind eye to reports of improper behavior, and at worse enabled a child rapist by knowingly covering up a crime.

I just simply can’t fathom that those things could be true.

My connection to Penn State began when I was approximately 8 years old. My family had moved to Pennsylvania not that long before, and there came a day when our elementary school lifted its ban on hats and invited all the students to wear their favorite baseball cap to class.

I didn’t have a baseball cap, so my mom went out and bought me one. It was a Nittany Lions cap and it’s still hanging in my room at home.

I decided that if the Lions were going to get my implicit endorsement as a result of my wearing their logo around school, I’d better find out who they were. Some people are born fans of their favorite teams. As an Army brat who already had five states under her belt, I had to make a conscious choice about which programs to be a fan of.

So I asked my dad about PSU. And he told me of a man named Joe Paterno.

My dad had great respect for JoePa -- and Bobby Bowden, whom he always mentioned in same breath with Paterno as the two longest-serving and greatest coaches in the game. I learned that Penn State had been an independent before it became the eleventh school in the Big 10 (something I found ironic), and that Paterno had been head coach there since 1966. I learned about the Grand Experiment, and the national titles, and that Penn State football won the right way, and that JoePa did it with class. He was the old guard, my dad would tell me. He was really something special.

For years I watched the Nittany Lions and dreamed of the day when I’d go to Dear Old State. Indeed, it was the first college I ever visited when the time came for me to start looking at schools.

My parents ultimately persuaded me to visit the University of Florida a few months later. By the time I got to high school, we’d long since moved to Tampa, which made UF a much more attractive choice to them. I’d be able to go for free -- not something to be taken lightly, they repeatedly reminded me -- and I’d only be two hours from home. It’s a fine school, they said. The finest in the state. Plus, it’s similar to PSU in its size, offerings and outsize obsession with college football.

That ended up being enough for me. I fell in love during the campus tour and haven’t for a moment regretted my decision to be a Gator.

Yet Penn State and JoePa retained a place of honor in my heart.

The charges against the monster that is Jerry Sandusky are horrifying. I can’t even wrap my brain around the reality that there could actually be people like him in this world. I am grieving for the victims just like any feeling person would be. And if they turn out to be true, I hope the justice system chews him up and spits him into a prison for the rest of his life. Actually, there’s a quote from Pulp Fiction that starts with “What now? Let me tell you what now” that would be appropriate.

But I find myself wondering whether there might be another way to look at Paterno’s role in all of this.

If he knew what was happening and put the welfare of a football team ahead of the welfare of those children, that is deplorable in every imaginable sense of the word, and he deserves to be be arrested.

But are we sure he understood what was going on?

Is it possible that he heard rumors less specific than what we’re being told he knew about -- about a close friend and long-time colleague whose name was practically synonymous in that town with charity -- and it didn’t occur to him that it could be this bad?

Isn’t it possible that the idea that this guy who spent all those many years on his staff was a child molester just seemed so patently ludicrous to JoePa that it never even crossed his mind?

Isn’t it human nature to reject the notion that someone you trust could be guilty of something so heinously, inexplicably, unforgivably awful? To assume there must have been some sort of misunderstanding, because the reality flies so thoroughly in the face of everything you know about that person?

The analogy I’ve been reading a lot is that a grown man doesn’t walk past a stranger raping a girl in an alleyway without calling the police.

Of course I agree. But I also think it’s at least possible that this situation was different -- if and only if the full picture of what McQueary witnessed wasn’t made clear to Paterno.

I guess in the end, I just cannot believe JoePa, a guy I’ve adored and looked up to nearly my entire life, could have been aware of what was happening and not done anything to stop it.

My beef with baseball

I've never been able to get much into baseball. It always seemed like such a tease. Why bother to watch a game that has a 1-in-162 chance of meaning anything at all at the end of the season? How do you get worked up for an outcome that has at most a negligible impact on your team's odds of winning a pennant? Why is it even sad when you lose? Baseball's played in series. It's as if the structure of the sport says to losing teams, "Not to worry, we'll give ya best of three."

For eleven months out of the year, my relationship with Major League Baseball consists of my Dad updating me on how many games the Rays are ahead of or behind the Yankees whenever I call home. I always roll my eyes and say, "That's nice, Dad. Only a hundred and fifty-three games to go until that number matters." I find it extraordinarily hard to get excited about anything that seems to have so little riding on it, especially because of how much time I spend watching college football. For us, "every given Saturday" isn't just a platitude. It's reality. It's life.

Every given football matchup matters, because any one loss, no matter how strong the opponent, can be enough to keep a team out of the national championship. For non-AQ teams, even going undefeated isn't necessarily enough. And it's not just the national championship that's on the line each week. One loss can disqualify a team from its conference title game or a BCS bowl altogether. That means the pressure's on every week, and it makes watching every game an event unto itself. Every snap, every pass, every rush and every kick means more when every game means everything.

Not so in baseball.

Yet, I know that's not the only thing wrong with the game in my opinion. It's a huge part of it, no doubt, but alone it's not enough to turn an otherwise exciting sport into a lifeless one. I know that's true because I watch hockey avidly despite the absurd length of its season. In fact, I almost enjoy the lower stakes. They allow for wild, unexpected swings in fortune like the one the Capitals underwent last year. Anything is possible when there's an 82-game season to be played; there's no resting on your laurels when any team could make a run for it at any given moment.

So what's the rest of my problem with baseball?

It's just boring. I mean, really. It just is. The pace of the game is slow. Minutes pass during which literally nothing happens. There isn't even a clock, for crying out loud -- talk about a metaphor for a total lack of urgency! Whereas in hockey or soccer or basketball there's a continual vying for possession, baseball is handcuffed by politeness, each team --hell, each player -- patiently waiting its turn for an exclusive, unencumbered chance to try to score.

What I will give baseball is this, however: it goes from utterly meaningless to thoroughly meaningful in a matter of seconds when the regular season ends. Though I couldn't care less about games 1 through 162, the playoffs matter quite a lot. It's those last few precious games that an entire season rides on, and because of that, the whole dynamic of the sport can be transformed. The moments between pitches go from empty, yawn-inducing wastes of time that could better be spent thinking about football to moments buzzing with tension and possibility -- not the calm before the storm, but the wait before a kiss.

So yes, in those years when the Rays have managed to make the playoffs, I have taken an interest. I've felt mildly bad about embodying the definition of bandwagon fanhood in the process, but hey. My time is valuable, and regular-season baseball simply isn't that important.

Except this year, because this year things got exciting two games early.

I started to feel uneasy Wednesday morning, when I checked in with ESPN and saw something the Rays did the night before described as "the most important triple play in major league history." I started to wonder if my strategy of waiting till the postseason to start thinking about paying attention might end up being a mistake.

It was. Because what happened on Wednesday night was unprecedented. I honestly couldn't tell you the odds of that particular string of events unfolding. But the fan/pundit reaction immediately afterward and continuing through the next day told me all I needed to know about the magnitude of what had happened. They seemed to be experiencing what I felt after Boise State-Oklahoma in 2007, or upon the realization we were going to get a matchup between mighty Butler and even mightier VCU in last year's Final Four. It was like the comeback against Brazil by the U.S. women's national soccer team I wrote about earlier this summer. It was all of that and more. And although I couldn't tell you the odds that were defied when the Braves, the Red Sox and the New York Yankees all collapsed in spectacular fashion within minutes of each other (the Yanks having squandered a 7-0 advantage in the ninth inning alone, the Sox having squandered a probability of winning of more than 95 percent, and the Braves having squandered a 10.5-game lead in just a month), Nate Silver can -- and he says the chances were about one in 278 million.

Holy mackerel.

I think the lesson I'm taking away from all of this is that I've been underestimating the game of baseball. I was sure it couldn't capture my imagination, and it did. I was sure it didn't have the capacity to be exciting, and it was. Major League Baseball proved me wrong. It made me feel like a kid again, when I can remember sneaking downstairs past my bedtime to watch the end of the '96 World Series, and being heartbroken by the result (I don't know why I liked the Braves so much, but I know I've never forgiven the Yankees).

Anyway, I'm not sure whether this experience is going to have any permanent ramifications on my desire to watch regular-season baseball down the line. But you can bet your bat I'll have one eye on the scores of the Rays games this weekend.

I'll probably think twice next time before off-handedly dismissing baseball fans for their silly pastime, too.

College football is in the air

My favorite time of year is right around the corner. I got a little taste of it last night when I attended the Redskins' first exhibition game of the season against Pittsburgh. I was happy to see that despite the long string of bad years this town has suffered, Washingtonians are still willing to don their Moss jerseys, pay exorbitant prices for tickets and make the trek out to Landover to support their team.

This time, the players rewarded us by not tripping over themselves, managing even to beat last year's Super Bowl runners up. When the Skins drew first blood on a beautiful toss from Rex Grossman to Santana, the crowd went crazy, belting out "Hail to the Redskins!" with the kind of enthusiasm I normally ascribe to college fans alone. I felt tinges of familiarity. It was almost like I was back at Florida Field.

Except not really.

Therein lies the real point of this blog post: for me to profess my undying devotion to college football and assert its superiority, as compared to the pros, in every way. Sure, the level of play of the NFL game may be higher. But so are the costs of fandom, and without the college game's rewards.

The adoration of the sport among players and spectators alike at the college level is unparalleled. It's matchless. Night games at the Swamp are an unearthly experience, one in which souls for miles join together in a wave of intensity and passion that I'm sure could power Gainesville if it could only be harnessed. I imagine fans at Death Valley or the Big House or The Shoe would say the same.

There's simply no way to argue the pro game can compare. Without the wild abandon of the student section, the pomp and circumstance of the marching band, the proud ownership of the program felt by decades of alumni, how could it ever hope to?

College football is more than a game. It's more, even, than an experience. It's a lifestyle, a way of living.

It's allowing yourself to be swept away in the magic of the season. To live and breathe and die with your team, knowing they are sweating and bleeding for you. It's to joyfully sacrifice whatever else may have the audacity to happen on a Saturday between Labor Day and New Year's and to instead immerse yourself in, to borrow a tagline the Masters don't deserve, a tradition unlike any other.

It's heaven. And it's here.

Three weeks from today, UF will open up another year. I have no idea what I think is going to happen.

I've always felt a high level of comfort in talking about our prospects in the off-season. A national championship was only ever twelve games away, and I knew my team well enough to have an idea about whether we could make a run. I was well-acquainted with the coach; I understood the system, having fallen in love with college football right alongside the introduction of the spread; and the players were my classmates in an abstract but still meaningful way.

This time around is very different.

We have a whole new coaching staff running an unproven pro-style offense. More importantly, I'm now three seasons removed from being a student there myself. Virtually none of the players I'd periodically cross paths with on campus are still around. The Gators are a different monster now, and with the press having been locked out of spring practices, I feel a complete absence of any sense of what to expect.

I'm nervous and excited and terrified and hopeful.

How amazing is it that a sport can make a person feel all that?