Thread: So poetic...

Originally Posted by Dagan81

I have had relatively few problems in the world of sports compared to you! lol.

Perhaps a couple or three others I could mention were the two times Ohio State played in the BCS National Championship Game and lost to Florida (41-14), and LSU (38-24). The last one would be the Yankees' World Series loss to the Florida Marlins in 2003. I would have much rather had lost to the Cubs than I would have to the Marlins because I would have known for certain that the truth best team out of the National League would have won the day.

LOL, those are actually a few of my personal highlights. I adopted the Gators as my team since Ian Scott, Alex Brown and a few others came to Chicago from Florida, and having them win 4 championships between the basketball and football teams was it, along with the Bears NFC championship win in 06.

Oh, and the Jets beating the Packers 42-17 to get in the playoffs and shutting the Colts out 41-0 in the wildcard round.

Originally Posted by Henry Burris

LOL, those are actually a few of my personal highlights. I adopted the Gators as my team since Ian Scott, Alex Brown and a few others came to Chicago from Florida, and having them win 4 championships between the basketball and football teams was it, along with the Bears NFC championship win in 06.

Oh, and the Jets beating the Packers 42-17 to get in the playoffs and shutting the Colts out 41-0 in the wildcard round.

The sports teams that I watch are the New York Yankees (which is my all-time favorite sports team, even above the Bears), the Chicago Bears, the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago Blackhawks (damn it all, they had better make it to the playoffs this season or I'm going to absolutely be pissed off), University of Tennessee football/men's basketball/women's basketball/baseball/softball, Ohio State University football/basketball, University of Kentucky basketball, and if the Yankees aren't playing, the Cincinnati Reds. As you can see, with the exception of watching UT men's basketball for most of my life while they were bad, UT football during the 2000s when they blew chunks, the Reds during the 2000s when they sucked ass, and the Blackhawks and Bulls during the early years of this decade when sucked dick, I have had relatively little to complain about regarding sports. True, the Bears have been up and down over the past decade, and the Yankees had four consecutive losing seasons from 1989-1992, but I have so much to be grateful for in my choice of professional and college sports teams.

I will always hate the Universities of Alabama, Florida, and Michigan because they are the main rivals of my two favorite college football schools (Alabama and Florida vs. Tennessee; Michigan vs. Ohio State). I have never been to an Ohio State football game, but I can tell you from my past experiences in attending UT football games that the atmosphere is absolutely electric. There is nothing like sitting in a crowd of over 102,000 of your best orange-clad friends to liven up the day. I haven't been to a UT basketball game since I went to see the #1 ranked Lady Vols destroy the #2 Louisiana Tech back in 1997, the year the UT women's basketball team finished with a 38-0 record and won a third consecutive NCAA Championship. The men's basketball team hasn't enjoyed as much success over the years as have the ladies, but in the 1960s, 1970s, and 2000s, they appeared in several NCAA Tournaments and made it all the way to six Sweet Sixteens and one Elite Eight. I fully expect that, if Bruce Pearl doesn't fuck up and land this program on probation after he lied about making too many phone calls to the NCAA, UT will get to a Final Four and, perhaps, win an NCAA Championship.

As for my New York Yankees, and this goes for why I don't sweat the Bears/Packers rivalry so much, I hate the Boston Red Sox, but at the same time, I look at them as another road block along the way toward reaching our goal that we as a fan base set at the beginning of every season: to win a World Championship. When the Yankees don't win a World Series, the fans go ballistic. Derek Jeter even says that a season ending sans a World Championship is a failed year. We demand to win because we have a swagger about us. We do not like to lose, even a little. We look to improve at every opportunity that is presented, at whatever the cost. Some people judge the Yankees as greedy and as an "evil empire", but the best way to draw fan interest to your team and to make money is to wisely invest money in player development and in free agency, within reason. Because we have done this for nearly 40 years, we have succeeded more times than not. I am no Yankees apologist, as I think that unlike the Cubs, the Yankees approach to competition is healthy.

The Cubs do not want to win because they have treated their fans to the same bullshit string of mediocrity for over 65 years. They live off of Wrigley Field. Don't get me wrong; Wrigley Field has a charm to it, and it certainly is the National League's most beautiful ballpark. But I, as a fan with a competitive mindset, can't bring myself to watch a franchise that considers losing to be part of the charm of the game day experience at Wrigley Field.