As I sat on the doorstep of adulthood and the real world last Sunday - the last weekend before the start of my fourth year - not even the opportunity to spend my last, truly free night out on the town could drag me away from watching a bunch of random guys wearing the helmet of my beloved Dallas Cowboys get torn to shreds by another set of random, oversized men masquerading as the San Diego Chargers. The NFL preseason was in full swing, and even though most of the players I was watching were closer to appearing in Kim Kardashian's wedding than in an actual, meaningful NFL game, I couldn't bear to skip even a single down. Trying to justify my actions to friends later that night, I attempted to articulate a theory of mine which underscores why I wasn't able to go out that night, and why the Cowboys - and sports in general - would take on an even greater significance in my life this year.
I am of the firm belief that each person has eight years of peak sports fandom. You get from your first day of high school to the day you graduate college, and that's it: like the career of Sandy Koufax, the peak is mighty, but nevertheless short-lived. During those eight years, your fandom is at a lifetime high. Without any real responsibility, you are free to devote all your energy to supporting your various teams, to rise to the highest summits with each triumph and to plummet to the lowest depths with each defeat. You can treat each snap, each pitch and each dribble like a fleeting moment of beauty which you'll never get the chance to experience again. You don't need to have a sense of moderation; most of us have yet to experience the true great moments in life - the birth of a child, a wedding and the like - and so athletic excellence is all we know.
With age and life experience, however, comes a greater understanding and perspective on the true ways of the world. When you have a family and a job, sports, by necessity, take a back seat. I joke with my father all the time about his lack of fanhood - about how he could willingly choose to spend an afternoon out with my mother rather than sit with me to watch the Mets or the Knicks - but now, as I too am nearing the adult stage of my life, I am beginning to understand why.
I've come to the conclusion that each person has the capacity to act on only so much pure emotion, and for someone like me - without a family or a true career - sports can fill that entire hole. However, when the more important things in life come around, sports get pushed to the background. It's not that the passion isn't there, that it leaves as you age, it's just that the active portion of it gets smaller and smaller. It's like when you're younger and all you want to eat is ice cream, you can eat tons and tons without fail. But when you get older, and you realize that it's about time to get some vegetables in your stomach, your desire for ice cream wanes. It's not that you can't eat as much, or that the sudden urges to eat an entire carton doesn't reappear - it's just that there's only so much room in your stomach and you'd rather fill it with nutritious veggies than with unhealthy cookies n' cream. Right now, I'm still in the ice cream stage, but come May, I'm sure I'll start asking for just a little bit of spinach as well.
Furthermore, I believe people of my age understand that this fixation with sports is irrational, and therefore it fulfills a psychological need to act irrationally. Most guys, I think, would tell you they secretly would love to do something completely irrational - be it rob a bank or steal a car - so long as they were guaranteed there would be no significant consequences. For people like me, these options are simply impossible, and so we turn to rabid fandom. We are obsessed with every detail and allow ourselves to get worked up into a mania because we can. With no family to support or wife to piss off with our ridiculous and childish behavior, the irrationality has very few possible negative consequences. We revel in the irrationality and thrive off of it. As soon as the potential consequences of our actions become too great - usually after one's college days - like Pavlov's dogs before us, we will cease performing the offending action.
And so it all boils down to this: I have one year of peak fandom left. One year left of watching every one of my teams' games, of watching five hours of ESPN a day and of foregoing meals and sleep to watch highlights I've already seen half a dozen times before. There is a time in the future - one which is approaching far more rapidly than I would like - when I will willingly turn off a game to work on something for my job, or choose to enjoy time with my own family instead of with my adopted one out on the playing field. And quite frankly, the mere thought of it terrifies me.
So if you see me around Grounds this year either running around like a chicken with his head cut off celebrating a win, or crying in a corner and slamming my head into doors after a loss, please be kind.
I've only got one year left.
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