THIS IS NOT A FUNNY POST...REALLY

The Jeezy and I were talking on the phone the other day about how people seem surprised when they find out we're sports fans, and they end up asking us why we like things like football. Jeezy and I aren't your typical all-american kinds of kids. We listen to weird music, we hang out with "different" sorts of people, we're both, in our own way, artistic personality types, we dress funny, we don't cut our hair for months at a time, and in my case, I'm a bespectacled nerd. We're not at all what you would consider to be an "average" guy. Neither of us would ever be invited to join a fraternity, and I've only been to 3 bars in my entire life.

So why, they ask, do you like sports? It's such a typical dude sort of thing to do, and for the most part, neither of you act like "dudes" as such. And while Jeezy was running down his reasons, they lined up almost point for point with mine. Sports are unpredictable, unlike almost everything else on TV or in movies right now. Each sport brings its own strategies along, and its own necessary ways to analyze it, which draws me in from a scientific standpoint. There's a unique sort of psychology to the athelete that you don't see anywhere else except on the field (or in some specific cases, during press conferences).

But the number one reason we watch sports is escapism. One way or the other, whoever wins or loses the game doesn't affect anything outside the insulated world of sports. If the worst team beats the best team, a fissure doesn't open in the earth and swallow the stadium whole. There aren't any matters of worldly importance hanging in the balance, unless you're a gambler, and then it's kind of your own fault for making sure there's a reason you're miserable while watching a game.

I bring this up, because it's important on several levels. People die every day. That's a fact. But when a baseball player crashes his plane into a building, SportsCenter can't get enough of showing the flight map, the burned out buildings, the spectators, and Jeremy Schaap doesn't hesitate to tell us that the Lidle family can't even go to their own home for the media camped out there, presumably himself included. Part of our escapist world has been intruded on by reality, and ESPN clings for dear life to this scrap of reality until it begins to make me wonder where I can go now to get away from this, and I end up watching Spongebob for 8 hours because I LIVE in the world, and sometimes I need to get away from it. I wish they'd leave these stories to CNN and spend more time on sports instead of human interest stories.

Secondly, the Miami brawl was brutal and horrifying to watch. How many times do we need to see Miami players swinging helmets at unprotected FIU players and stomping guys on the ground? And in all seriousness, if you heard there was a huge brawl on the field this weekend, the first two places that would have jumped to mind were Miami and FSU. Those players have always acted like that, to the point where they fight each other on and off the field (and if you throw Florida in that mix, well, you could fill a few DVDs with the brawls between those teams). The problem was that ESPN seemed to just show the footage for shock value. Today is Monday, 2 days after the fact, and I saw it again in the 5 minutes I watched SportsCenter. So once again, while trying to escape the realities of the world, sports draws me back in by showing how terrible people can be to one another, so I watched Saved by the Bell instead.

The final event was the Vanderbilt loss by Georgia. As a fan, it was a crushing loss, and it hurt. And I started to think about why I have so much invested in a team full of guys I've never met from a school I was miserable at for 3 years. Why do I care so much if this is supposed to be a way for me to escape the world for a little while? I mean, I have plenty of things in my life that make me unhappy or that make me worry, so why would I add this trivial competition into my life as an extra factor that can make me more unhappy or anxious? I mean, that loss is going to ruin the rest of my season. Georgia can win out and beat Florida by 50, and that loss to Vanderbilt is going to be the thing I can't get over. Why do I do this to myself?

I think it's because there's another part of sports that is more important than the escape from the world they provide, and that's the sense of community and the link that you have with other fans of your team. It's the passion that rooting for a team can cause in you, the way it can make you jump up and down and scream in front of people who've never heard you say a word. I guess all of this is related to the point about it being unpredictable: if Georgia blocks that field goal, or causes a fumble, then I'm cautiously elated instead of horrendously depressed. But it's also knowing that you're not the only person living and dying with the flight of that ball, that there's this invisible link between all the fans of a given team. And that's even more important now that I live in Boston. If I see someone with a UGA hat or shirt or vanity plate on their car, I can talk to them, because we have this same passion, and we can provide a bridge back to our homes 1000 miles south of us in our shared support of the team that we just can't help pulling for.

That Georgia loss was brutal, and it was embarrassing to watch, and every member of the Bulldog nation knows it. But despite that, and despite the fact that our escape made us feel worse than the world we were trying to get away from, none of the true fans threw their shirts in the garbage or burned their hats or jerseys or threw out their face paint. Sports is an escape, but it's an escape from the horrors and tragedies of life, and that's why the relentless coverage of the Corey Lidle crash, the TO suicide watch and the Miami brawl are unwelcome intrusions in this sphere of our lives. Losing to Vanderbilt is not a tragedy, and all of us fans will live to root all those players on again, no matter how many times they break our hearts. We'll just change the channel when they show the highlights in their "we told you so" voices, knowing that there are still chances this year to be on the other side of the upset. Our faith in them may waver, but our hope never will.