"Do you know what your problem is; you cared more about watching Sunday Night Football yesterday than you did about preparing for this lab."
I wanted to tell Leanne to go fuck herself but I managed to show some restraint. Provoking a fight with your lab partner five-minutes into a six-hour grind would have made an aggravating couple of hours even more hellacious. Leanne can sometimes be kind of a bitch but she’s cool. I’m quite familiar with her inability to keep her mouth closed. Most of the time, it’s great comedy but other times she oversteps her boundaries. We get along fine but neither of us really know one another very well. Definitely not well enough for her to be telling me what’s wrong with myself in a serious tone.
It’s funny though, because if your ex-girlfriend had said do you know what your problem is and then followed that up with some penetrating remark, just after passing the point of no return in a break-up conversation, it would feel about the same as taking a speeding lacrosse ball to the solar plexus. It’s not just an annoying assumption or accusation. She actually knows you, all sides of you, the good and the bad. Her words carry with it some degree of substance. If there’s anyone that could point out some of your legitimate flaws, it’s her.
All that seems pretty obvious, right? I mention those two antithetical perspectives in a social setting for a reason. In a slightly different context, I react similarly to critical statements from sports fans. The people offering opinions from an ignorant position will always infuriate me while those speaking from an informed position will always have my attention and respect even if I disagree or am upset with what they say.
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Every now and then an ugly story breaks in a sports league that causes some stress for the public relations people. After the details are all sorted out, the fans of other sports leagues rally together and say something like see, they suck; we told you so; that sport is awful! For some reason a desire exists in some sports fans to put down other leagues. Maybe they do it to indirectly elevate the reputation of their favorite sport. I’d much rather they just keep their mouths shut.
I’ve noticed that most casual sports fans have been heavily drinking the MLB flavored haterade for quite awhile now. Steroid use in baseball was a huge scandal but it occurred in a pretty small window. It’s about time people move on now. Basketball had a major cocaine problem and an alarming number of football players are suffering later in their lives from untreated concussions they sustained during their playing careers. Every banana eventually bruises.
Ironically, the people that criticize baseball the most are always the least qualified to do so. How can anyone form a critical analysis of a sport they’re barely familiar with beyond what they see on the highlight reel? They cheated! They lied! Where’s the honor?
Please, enough already. Don’t these people remember what it was like on the other side of the spectrum? Think how cool it was to witness the Red Sox come back from being down 0-3 in the ALCS against the Yankees in the 2004; or when the Rockies went on that insane tear from the start of September, 2007, all the way to the World Series; or how about just watching Jose Reyes hit, run, and field; or seeing Josh Beckett throw a baseball when he’s Josh Beckett . If they don’t remember or can’t appreciate some of the times when baseball was on the up then they’re not real fans and their opinion matters a little bit less than not at all.
They’re just like Leanne, bitching, telling me to prioritize — judging me for how I spend my time away from beakers and formulas.
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I expected to read a heaping of ignorance and verbal venom from people after NBC decided to bump a preliminary men’s hockey game between the United States and Canada to a satellite channel and go instead with ice dancing on channel 2. I got exactly what I expected. All the crazy assumptions and misguided opinions drove me up a wall. Most real hockey fans take these blatant displays of national disinterest pretty hard. We make a lot of excuses so that we feel better. Maybe you’ve been able to get over it better than I. These situations still sting for me. It’s not the facts itself so much as the conclusions and subsequent judgments that come from people who occupy their time with sports.
I think that it is not the competition or quality of sport that limits national interest in hockey, it’s that hockey isn’t relevant, culturally, in most places in the United States. That’s not an excuse — it’s my personal opinion as someone who follows this league very closely. I like to think my perspective allows me to say things like that. Diehards all have their own theory and those are the people I spend the most time listening to, not the talking heads who want to protect the shield, not loyal basketball fans, not even the casual hockey fans.
The casual hockey fan knows the sport well enough to be able to say a few things about Crosby, Ovechkin and Brodeur without sounding like an idiot. They also might keep an eye on his or her hometown hockey team. But they see NBC’s slight very differently than the diehards. These are the people, coupled with the majority of the country who care little for hockey, that use stories like this to justify hockey’s reputation as a sport of lesser quality than the other major sports. Frankly that’s just a ridiculous position to take and one that requires more than a light dusting of ignorance to side with.
People like to say that hockey is a niche sport. I think niche is the wrong word. Fight Club and The Big Lebowski are niche movies that resonate heavily within a small demographic. Hockey is a sport that can grow a tremendous following in any community so long as the professional team wins semi-regularly. But it doesn’t have the staying power as it does in other places where hockey has become woven within the culture of the community. This happens most often in locations where snowfall isn’t considered a cause for crisis and families develop memories relating to hockey.
If a person didn’t grow up in a hockey culture and they can’t seem to find the appeal of the sport, they’re in the majority. It doesn’t make them wrong. Hockey is just a culture thing; same as basketball though b-ball lends itself more easily to the peripheral fan. There is simply a larger number of Americans who identify themselves with and grow up in the culture with which basketball, football and baseball is attached to. Though I wish they did, I can understand why people in Nashville or Dallas don’t watch the nationally televised hockey games on VS as much as other communities do. I’m not sure how those people feel about the fact that ice dancing will be showing on the networks primary channel this Sunday night instead of a premiere men’s ice hockey game. I like to think it bothers them but probably not. I accept that hockey will never reach the popularity that would measure up to my personal interest in it. I’m just tired of people dumping on hockey especially those that just don’t have any idea what they’re talking about. The competitive quality of the sport has never been the issue.