infinite improbability

Football? already?

Everybody's talking football, but for whatever reason, I just can't seem to get into it and get psyched for the start of football season this year. Maybe when the regular season starts, I'll get into it, but at the moment, I have a feeling of general blahness about the whole deal. Dunno, it could be because there have been so many off season changes for the Bucs that they don't even feel like the same team that I know and love, and that I've just been put through the wringer so many times by that team that I'm having a hard time getting my hopes up and being optimistic. Yeah, my sports teams have had recent success, and people talk about being a title town and all that, but the reality is that our teams have a cycle of getting good enough that we all get our hopes up, and then they dash them. The Bucs win the Superbowl, and then they go back to being the same old sucky Bucs, but now we know what winning feels like and when you go from those heights back down to mediocrity, the mediocrity is even more painful than it was all those years where we'd watch and at the start of every training camp we'd grasp at any little sign and think "maybe this is the year."

I don't know why sports fans do it to themselves. All those years of supporting your team and hoping that your team will win, even though you know that only one team can do it, and that even if your players are good, there can be injuries and missed field goals and then suddenly because of three plays that went the wrong way, instead of being in the division race, you're suddenly rooting for a team that's trying desperately to finish the season over .500 and all your hopes are for naught. But then, I remember that one glorious night in January when everything went right, and the next thing I know, I'm watching Malcolm Glazer being handed the Lombardi trophy and I can hardly believe it because my team, my team that has always had something go wrong, has actually won the Superbowl. And then there was the day in late May when I walked into the St. Pete Times Forum box office and pulled out my credit card to buy tickets to the Lightning's first ever Stanley Cup Finals game, hardly able to believe that I was actually buying a ticket to see my beloved hockey team playing for the Cup, and walking into the building with my sister that night, repeating over and over to myself "I can't believe it, I'm going to see the Lightning play for the Stanley Cup," and then that night almost two weeks later when I was standing in the middle of a crowd of thousands of screaming people, drenched in beer and not caring because I had just watched my team win, and I could hardly believe it was true. When I remember those glorious moments, everything else seems worth it, and after all, it can't possibly be as good if you haven't endured years of agony to get there, can it? Maybe I'm not so blah about football season after all.