The cost of being an occasionally 'rational' sports fan by Thomas Johnson

Originally published with Playerspress Sportscaster Network: http://playerpress.com/articles/the-cost-of-being-an-occasionally-rational-sports-fan

On the heels of yet another season-defining performance from Dwyane Wade, I should be sharing my thoughts on what just transpired a mere 24 hours ago. I would love to, however, there’s a small problem. That is, I wasn’t able to watch past the three-minute mark of the fourth quarter. That’s right, I missed the first overtime period. Second period? Missed that too.

The irony of all ironies is that I could have been at this game. I could have witnessed Wade’s buzzer beating three-pointer first hand. But I didn’t. I could have been one of the fans cheering hysterically as he stood on the scorer’s table. But I wasn’t. You see, being the broke college student that I am, I decided to actually be somewhat fiscally responsible for once. And a lot of good that did me.

This fateful story begins with Erika, a good friend of mine calling me regarding some discounted lower bowl tickets she had come across. While my immediate gut reaction was of course ‘Yes!!’ this decision was unfortunately short-lived.

Shortly after being told about the offer, I proceeded to call a couple more friends to get them in on it too. I called my buddy Andrew (a fellow Heat-diehard) to let him in on this sweet deal as well, only to be met with an ‘I’d love to, but I’m broke’ reaction. Ugh, sobering reality.

Up until that point I had forcefully ignored the fact that only two days earlier I had been lamenting over my dire finances. I had pushed past this detail and was doing well with my reliable short-term gratification justification of ‘only living once’ and ‘not being able to put a price on experience’. You see, the funny thing about the majority of people (myself included) is that it’s just so much easier to do something you know you shouldn’t be doing when there is someone else right there with you making the same mistake. This can apply to anything: skipping class, that one last drink, buying tickets you can’t afford, you name it.

Unfortunately for the both of us, this time Andrew wasn’t joining me in mistake-making. Still, undeterred by his initial reaction, I thought I’d go online and check my bank account to see if I could spot him the cash. I was in for a surprise.

Forget spotting Andrew, judging by the lack of digits and decimal places, it probably wasn’t too smart of an idea for me to be spotting myself. That’s not to say, that I couldn’t have afforded the tickets, just that it would have been PB and J sandwiches for lunch and dinner for the next solid week or so.

Consequently, It was at about this point that I made the stupid decision to be rational. Gone was my ‘only living once’ mantra. Instead I started trying to rationalize the more frugal choice:


‘The playoffs are coming up. I’ll need some cash for those games…’
‘It’s 6:30 already, by the time we get there the first quarter will be done and I’ll be one of those annoying late-arriving fans that I can’t stand….’
‘At least I’ve already seen Derrick Rose in person once this year…’
‘There’s always TV, I’ll just watch it with a couple beers, it won’t be so bad….’

After talking myself into saving some money by not going, I called Erika back and let her know that I would unfortunately have to give the game a miss. Since my girlfriend had just arrived at my house, ‘we’ instead decided to make it a movie night. I had just come across the movie ‘Taken’ and figured why not? I went into the other room and set the DVR to record the game. However, like an idiot, I forgot to record the next program right after the game, a precautionary measure just in case the game ran a little longer.

(Time for a mini rant: Is it such a crazy, technologically-improbable idea that somewhere, somehow, one of the geniuses working at DirecTV could come up with a more fluid recording system? I don’t know, maybe one that allows networks to notify the satellite companies when a program is obviously going to run past its time slot so they can digitally extend the recording time. I know I can’t be the only person out there that has watched an entire recording of something only to miss the last 10-15 minutes of the program because the show ran longer than expected. When was the last time a basketball game ended at the time it was scheduled to anyway? Maybe change the estimated run time for basketball games from two and a half hours to three. Is that crazy? It’s 2009 and somehow DVR’s seem to cause just about the same amount of frustration that VCRs did. It drives me wild. And if you think I’m deflecting the attention from my lack of forethought to modern technology, then you know me too well.)

That aside, let’s get back to my depressing reality. Whilst I was in the midst of ‘enjoying’ a pretty generic action flick, Wade had probably just hit his third three pointer of the night, although it’s anyone’s guess. At this point I think that it’s also worth mentioning that I can no longer even pretend to be a fair critic of ‘Taken’. Don’t ask me what I thought of the movie. Seriously. I now have way too many negative associations with this film to even pretend to look at this flick as a movie, and not as something that just took away my time from something far more important. (Yeah, I’m not bitter)

So anyway, after the movie my girlfriend leaves and I decide to finally sit down and watch the recording of the game. This tends to happen more and more frequently where I’ll miss watching a game live and instead watch the recording later that night after avoiding pretty much any sports media, text message, or phone call that could possibly tip me off as to the result. This might be the only thing I’m kind of OCD about. I read way too much into things and just based on the tone of a buddy’s voice, even if there is no mention of the game, I feel like I can guess if Miami won or not (and more often than not I’m annoyingly right). So there’s that.

However, all of this is a moot point, because even with all the avoidance in the world, none of it mattered when my recording stopped at the 3:34 mark of the fourth quarter. I had been fast-forwarding through the game, with an eye on how much time was left, so it wasn’t really a surprise. (Of course I was hoping that the last 20 minutes of the recording somehow fit in the entire fourth quarter. Ah, delusional optimism.) It was a close game at that point (I believe the Bulls were up by two), and I figured that it would probably be decided in the final seconds. I just didn’t know that these last seconds would in fact still be a couple overtime periods away.

Of course I then go online to find out how the game finished, not expecting anything too out the ordinary, so you can imagine my shock when I see the headline “Wade scores 48 to beat the Bulls in double overtime” staring back at me. I had such a mixed reaction to the news. Being a Heat fan, I was of course thrilled to see that Wade had once again surpassed his own lofty standards of greatness and willed the team to a significant victory with playoff implications.

But that aside, on a purely selfish level I felt an overwhelming sense of frustration. It was a weird mix of knowing that while I should be feeling overjoyed by the news, I just couldn’t convince myself that that was how I actually felt. I’m guessing that this odd combination of joy and frustration is kind of comparable to what a former star player feels when winning a championship, not as a core contributor, but as the tenth guy on the bench (see Glen Rice). While there is no denying that winning a championship is in and of itself awesome, I’d be shocked if inside, Glen Rice wasn’t significantly bothered by the fact that he finally got his ring as a footnote instead of as a headliner.

Part of the frustration was due to the fact that I knew, (based on a lifetime of watching basketball) just how much of a thrill ride it must have been to watch that game live. I watched the highlights almost out of obligation and the dramatic ending of the game (Wade stealing the ball and hitting a three at the buzzer) only added insult to injury. It’s a game I’ll never get back. I will only be able to halfheartedly nod in agreement when friends tell me how incredible it was, and when I hear commentators reference this particular game to make a broader point about Wade’s MVP candidacy or career, part of me will always cringe on the inside.

Considering that I could have had good seats for this game made the matter so much worse. Upon reflection, I couldn’t believe my own financial justifications for not going. What was I thinking? My own motto of never putting a price on experiences was looking so wise in hindsight. I wish I would have ran with it.

In a way, it’s games like this that give the relationship between sports and fans some sort of perspective. One of the main reasons people watch sports at all is because on any given night, something amazing might happen. Considering that I am fortunate enough to be watching Wade at the peak of his career, in the midst of one of his best stretches of play, only increases the odds that something unbelievable like this 48-point game might happen at any time. All things considered, there are three things I can take away from this whole ordeal:

1. Dwyane Wade has reached the point where I am going to have to start fitting my schedule around watching Heat games. Not the other way round.

2. If I ever have a chance to get a good deal on tickets again, you better believe I’m food stamping it up before I miss another potentially epic game.

3. I will never watch ‘Taken’ again. Ever.