The Champ... and Those Who Fell Short

(Note: A piece from Cheddar Ben follows this one from A.F.O.M.G.)

I had an interesting experience watching football last weekend. I was out at a friend's place in the impossibly cool Williamsburg watching the Eagles-Saints match.

You know me, I don't really care about football. I vaguely dislike the Eagles because I think Philly fans, as a general rule, suck, and because they eliminated the Giants, but at the end of the day I didn't really care who won.

But watching along with me were four absolute diehard Eagles fans, and I'll tell you, it was really interesting to see the range of emotions unfold. They watched the game in varying degrees of elation and depression, hope and hopelessness as the Eagles and the Saints squared off in what was really an excellent game, one the Saints would end up winning, 27-24.

They're emotions that I recognized instantly, but I'd never really seen them displayed on someone else's face in an atmosphere in which I was completely impartial.

I saw a lot of Yankees-Red Sox playoff games in college, but I was always rooting for the Red Sox. I haven't known any diehard fans of the teams that've won the NBA Finals the last several years, or of the teams that lost. Same goes for football.

Last Saturday's Eagles-Saints game was different though. And when it was over, and I saw the miserable look on some of their faces, and heard the what-ifs tossed around and the scrutiny of Andy Reid's decisions, it was immediately familiar.

There's never enough winning to go around in sports. One team out of 30 or so wins, and the rest fall short.

They say the highs are never as high as the lows are low. I believe it, but I'm going to have to trust the conventional wisdom on that one. I've cheered Mets teams through 162 games, through to the World Series one year even, but I've never seen a winner, not that I can remember at least.

Sometimes I get to thinking that it's a kind of suffering that only somebody uniquely situated as a Mets fan can understand. Looking around at those Eagles fans this past weekend though, hearing them say "this always happens to Philadelphia teams" (how many times have I said to myself "this always happens to the Mets"?), it made me appreciate that in many ways, being a diehard fan of a team that's never won is perhaps the most unifying constant of all.

None of it means that I'm going to start rooting for the Eagles or the Phillies or whoever else just so that their fans can feel good, but I don't know, maybe some of that fan maturation stuff Sip was talking about yesterday has rubbed off on me.

I know the suffering of those Eagles fans, even if I don't know a thing about the Eagles. It's enough to keep me from making fun of them at least.

Besides, I don't need to get my laughs doing that, not when there's old footage of Mike Tyson available on YouTube. Honestly, some of The Champ's interviews are too much. Here's a little montage to send you off into the weekend.



Enjoy.

- A.F.O.M.G.

(Images courtesy of media.scout.com.)