It isn't that I hate football, per se, so much as people who like football. Subtle difference: hate the player, not the game. I wouldn't even say that I have anything against the concept of a herd of highly-trained genetically engineered mutants bashing each other's skulls into the ground ... it's a lot like a frat bar only with brighter colors. No; I hate professional sports because they have become an exercise in caring.

But unlike any civic duty, society gains virtually no benefit from its exercise. Clusters of testosterone-swelled Neanderthals paint their bodies in the colors of their tribes and make their pilgrimage to chest thump against the opposing tribes.

Believe! Obey! Fight! MOYC* is Always Right!

Repeatedly, I overhear 20-something males bragging that they only cry when it's acceptable ... namely, when their Team loses. That is the unmistakable lesson to the American male as he grows up: Be tough. Emotion is weakness. Weakness is not manly. Man is power. Power is good. Be good for your nation(/team).

Now. Perhaps I'm one of those intellectual, post-hardcore, drone-loving, pre-apocalyptic renaissance men; but I think there are plenty more acceptable reasons to show emotion. For example, the sense of emptiness that fills you after the loss of a loved one. For example, the empathy of watching someone you care about go through heartbreak. For example, getting your penis stuck in a sliding glass door. All things that suck.

In fact, one of the things I don't think is worth showing emotion over is something as completely pointless as less points being scored by a group of strangers who you for some arbitrary reason align yourself with. So, why do we care?

Is it our first indoctrination into Jingoism? Is it our way of breaking our social world into smaller spheres so that "We" can feel a part of something and feel superior to "Them"? Is it that we're so emotionally bloated, that we'll take some reason -- any reason -- to care?

Don't ask me. I don't get it either.



* MOYC: (prop. n. - m-oy-k) Mascot of Your Choice. A politically correct phrasing to evoke whichever sports mascot is preferred by the reader