The Meaning of Sports II (Part One)

My weekends tend to be so busy, that they are, in fact, my busiest times, while for most people, they are an opportunity to relax.

But every now and then, I do get to have a bit of a life, and go out and do something fun during a weekend.

So it is that the last month has been really kind of hard on me. A lot of pressures seemed to be rushing at me from different angles, and I was on the verge of feeling overwhelmed - on numerous occasions. But this past Friday, I received two signs that, perhaps (dare I hope?), this unfortunate stretch might finally be over. Maybe, at the very least, the worst of it will be over.

Now, that came right before a weekend, and this weekend itself no ordinary weekend. It was expected to be quite busy - and believe me, it was! I had a rough night (I usually work overnights, by the way), having a very difficult time staying awake. This has been about the third or fourth consecutive night shift in a row where I struggled almost every minute to stay awake. In fact, right now, this is the most awake that I have felt - and I just came back from my "lunch hour", during which, yes, I take it down and close my eyes and take a nap.

This one seems to have actually helped a bit, and that comes at just the right time, because for once, this weekend won't end for me on Monday morning. Once I get out of here, instead of going home or being free to do whatever I want to do, I have instead to go to my other job, my weekend job, for a four hour meeting.

Why four hours? Isn't that a bit on the long side, for something that is supposed to be rather a routine?

I thought so. So did everyone else who has to attend. But, as that new saying goes, "It is what it is."

Right.

In any case, I really felt great heading into this weekend, and was in the mood to celebrate.

Now, I have to make an admission here. The stress and pressure that I have been under has affected my moods, my behavior. It made me more irritable, more easily prone to snap at someone else, and that is where this celebration comes in. You see, for the first time ever, I felt as if my son and I were drifting apart a little bit there. Now, I wanted to use this weekend to do something that might help us gel once again. Something purely fun that he could enjoy. That we could enjoy, together.

So, I got tickets to the Giants game.

And what a game it was! If you are at all familiar with American football, you know that this time of the year, September, marks the annual start to the new football season. Weekend television tends to be dominated by football programming. College on Saturdays, and professional on Sundays.

Now, I have long been a fan of the New York Football Giants. As I was growing up, I became a huge fan of theirs, especially when they rewarded us fans with a Super Bowl XXI title, and then followed that up four years later with another championship in Super Bowl XXV, although they won it by the slimmest of margins in a very hard fought game, just barely holding off the favored Buffalo Bills, 20-19.

That last title came during my high school days, and of course, predictably, things changed. I changed, for that matter, too. Went to college, tried to build a social life, and suddenly, making a point of staying inside on a beautiful weekend such as the one that we just experienced was not such a priority. Up until that point in time, I would systematically stay inside in order to watch the games, particularly those involving my Giants. It often times would make or break my week, depending on whether the Giants won or lost. I really hate to admit that, but there it is. If they won, I'd be predictably happy. But if they lost, I would feel down, as if I personally had lost something.

When they won the championship, it felt like it almost made my year. I was euphoric, in seventh heaven!

I remember hearing a quote from then Giants head coach Bill Parcels after winning Super Bowl XXV, where he said that winning was better than sex. Since I had not yet had sex back then, I really had no basis for comparison. All I knew is that the feeling I got from their victories, particularly from their championships, were sweet indeed, and it seemed natural that I would be as rabid a fan all of my life as I was then. I didn't question it.

Not yet, anyway.

But here's the thing: once I started meeting girls that I was interested in, the interest in football took an automatic backseat. Before long, I was more interested - far more interested! - in having some semblance of an actual social life, than in making such a point to follow a bunch of spoiled athletes in matching uniforms play a game against another band of athletes in other matching uniforms do battle with one another, presenting a unique opportunity for these athletes to perform and show off their talents, all in a bid, essentially, to illustrate why they were so essential and, why they should get more money. They already were paid millions of dollars for what they were doing, and they constantly wanted more and more. That had been the case when I was younger, of course. But salaries just took off and absolutely exploded beginning in the seventies and into the eighties (the so-called "Me decade", after all).

In the meanwhile, it was expected that "real fans", and I had long believed myself to be just such a fan, would loyally follow and route for their team, and that usually included purchasing clothes and other merchandise, of course.

Of course.

Somehow, as I started growing up a bit, I did question it. And here's the strange thing: it began to seem silly, indeed. Moreover, it began almost to feel offensive, as if someone were pulling the wool over all of our eyes, collectively. It was all just one big hoax, seemingly.

So, my interest in sports waned quite a bit. I even remember the moment, or a moment that I keep returning to, when it perhaps fully dawned on me that there had been a fundamental shift in my own approach to sports. It came in 1993, and the Giants were on Monday Night Football. They had won the Super Bowl a few seasons before that (as I mentioned already), but had then suffered through two poor seasons in following that up. But now, they were good again, and even enjoyed the best record in the league. That Monday night, they were to play the New Orleans Saints, and the Saints, who had been very strong in the seasons prior, were suddenly really struggling. The Giants were expected to win, and convincingly - and indeed, they did so.

But I had been hanging out with a girl that I was interested in at the community college that I attended, and I enjoyed spending time with her. Somehow, however, I mentioned the game and how big it was, and she then urged me to go home and watch it. The thing was, I really did not want to, and for the first time, perhaps, even felt silly for having mentioned the game at all. That was the moment that I realized that something had seriously changed in my approach to sports.

Now, don't get me wrong: I still enjoyed sports. Still enjoy them, in fact. But my approach was beginning to be more detached, and to be quite honest, this seemed (and still seems) like a healthier approach to sports.

Sports is entertainment. No more, no less. A lot of people make analogies between sports and other things, including life, including war. On some level, I can see the basis for comparison. On some other levels, such comparisons seem laughable, especially depending on the level of seriousness in the approach by the one forwarding such arguments.

For example, let's take the famous words of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. He once said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." He went on to suggest, essentially, that winning was a habit and that so was losing.

While there may be some grain of truth to that, it is a limited and limiting, black and white approach to life, if taken at face value (as it very often is, believe me). It has been used by players in various sports, not just football, and it has been recognized as words of inspiration in other fields, as well. That certainly includes the business world. In fact, the first time I saw a copy of the fuller speech, and came to understand the context of that famous quote, it was in an office, in the office, in fact, of a top executive.

At first, I wrote down parts of it, with the intention of looking it up online in order to reread it. You see, I wanted to find something in it, some secret to success or something that might provide a hint at a new approach to life to take in order to be successful. Wanting to fulfill some personal ambitions towards being well accomplished and well off, I was hoping to feel that tide of inspiration that would suddenly come pouring over me.

It never happened.

Yet, I wanted it to happen. And since these fabled words had become so legendary, even achieving a measure of immortality and mysticism, probably as a result of the death of Lombardi, which elevated his status to that of almost a demigod. Someone who could do no wrong.

I wanted to believe that there was some secret to success in this world, in this life, and that all it would take was an attitude adjustment.

Okay, I have perhaps, arguably, gone off track. This was supposed to be a relatively short blog about a football game I went to, and obviously, I digressed. I will write about it, but am finding this little treatise quite entertaining and thought-provoking in it's own right, and will likely return to it, as well. But for now, I will leave this here, to be continued....

Here is a link that provides the full text of those famous words by Vince Lombardi:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/25145570/Vince_Lombardi_The_Number_One_Speech