Post #197

Lately I've been ingesting frequent, small doses of television, owing to the three days a week I'm in the men's locker room at the local gym before and after swimming. My friend Jeff commented years ago that the gym was his main source of keeping up to date with the latest in pop music. For me, the gym is my main source for knowing what's going on in professional sports, being as how the locker room TV sets are more often than not tuned to a sports news show.

Lately, the loudest hubbub on those shows has been about college basketball and, invariably, the various “mistakes” made by the games' referees. (The quotation marks in that previous sentence are quite intentional because little in the way of basketball refereeing seems objective to me.) In this case, a referee called a five-second violation on a Texas player in the waning seconds of the Texas-Arizona game, though instant replay clearly shows that the player signaled for a timeout before his five seconds expired. But the violation call had been made, causing Texas to turn over the ball, and it happened that Arizona ended up coming from behind to win. Thus, thousands of people were arbitrarily made happier here in Arizona while thousands of people in Texas were arbitrarily made unhappier. All this is likely the fault of one guy wearing black pants and a striped shirt. And you think you get singled out for messing up where you work!

Frankly, I don't understand fans' angst against referees who blow calls. I can understand and sympathize with players' frustrations but not the fans'. Listening to these sports shows' commentary in the mornings, it's obvious that, for many, watching sports is more about outcomes and the following of process and proper procedure than it is about enjoyment and entertainment. It seems silly how fans regularly put their emotions at risk like this.

I remember my dad commenting after the Oilers left Houston in the 1990s about how it was much better without a local team around. Instead of the TV always carrying the local game, which may or may not have been a good match-up any given week, the TV stations in Houston were free to broadcast what was expected to be the best game in the league. I think this reasoning can be carried further. Once a fan stops identifying with the success or failure of a particular team or athlete, he can enjoy nearly any game, regardless of the outcome, regardless whether officials blow calls and whatever other controversy occurs. Or, better yet, that fan can stop watching altogether and instead finish putting on his goggles and go swimming.