Like millions of sports fans around the world, I have chosen to root for a team that loses. A lot. And, like most of these fans, I get upset when we lose. Knowing this, I still root for a team with a long history of futility. In the clinical world, this is known as Self-Defeating Personality Disorder; in the sports world, we call it Fandom. But no matter what you call it, the fact is that I’ve chosen to make a hobby out of misery. Which leaves me asking, “why?” To solve this unanswerable question, I turned to the definitive source of unanswered questions: The Matrix. There’s a key scene near the end of the first movie, when Agent Smith reveals to Morpheus that the original version of the matrix was designed to simulate a complete human utopia. This utopia proved to be a failure, as the human mind simply could not accept the paradise as real. “Human beings,” Smith concludes, “define their reality through suffering and misery.” I think this idea applies to sports as well. Sports fans define their reality through suffering and misery, which is why we can still root for losing teams. Let’s take a trip down the rabbit hole.
As a sports fan, Game Day means many things to me. It means getting together with friends. It means speculating about our chances to get a win. And, perhaps most importantly, it means complaining about my team. Because when it comes to sports, complaining is the activity that brings together fans like nothing else that doesn’t come in a crock pot. Sports fandom is a contradictory obsession, marked by our intense love for a team that we often resent. Whether it’s the coach, bench players or mascot, we never fail to find reasons to complain. But if we spend as much time critiquing our team as we do rooting for them, how much are we really enjoying the game? And if we don’t enjoy actually watching the games, what part of sports do we enjoy?
Yet, even when we’re complaining about our team, we know it will be worth it when we finally get that elusive victory. The one that we’ve been dreaming about. Do you remember how good you felt after that big win? Yeah…..me neither. No matter how great it was at the time, the feeling of victory is ultimately a fleeting one. What I do remember is how much it hurt to lose at the last second. How the ref blew the call that would have won the game. How things could have been different. How it’s always the same. If winning is everything, then why is losing the only thing that truly resonates in our memory? Furthermore, if we accept that our memories are the only truly personal record of our experiences, this means that losing is the definitive record of our sports experiences. If our only personal record of sports is centered on defeat, then it appears that we do define our sports experience through suffering.
In light of evidence concerning our inability to enjoy games and obsession over past defeats, I’m convinced that myself and other fans define our sports reality through suffering and misery. On the surface this seems like a depressing thought but we don’t have to think of it as all bad. Having a hobby where nothing seems to go right can be a useful outlet to vent emotions that would otherwise grow unchecked. It doesn’t feel good to lose; the only thing worse is feeling nothing. I suppose that’s what the machines in Matrix could never understand. Which is probably why we never see Agent Smith in a Mets hat.
