By 
As someone who has been a diehard sports fan my entire life–who has completely invested emotionally in my team through thick and thin, who has spent cumulatively about a full year of my life watching, thinking about, and writing about my team (I did the math), who has experienced maybe the best and worst moments of my life because of my team, I have one piece of advice for all of you out there.
Don’t.
If you started off as a casual fan and are starting to get more into it, or if you’re thinking of choosing a team, or you’re about to introduce hardcore fandom to your child…
Just bail. Don’t do it. It’s not, in any way, worth it.
After 27 years on this planet, why do I still get so invested in something that so clearly doesn’t matter? Why do I snap at innocent bystanders after a bad loss? Why do I gutturally scream after a victory, like I just broke out of Shawshank? Do I have some kind of developmental disorder? Shouldn’t there be some kind of adult education class on how to stop this? Shouldn’t all of us weird manchildren have moved on by now?
Here’s why I think this happens: It’s because sports are incredibly good at pulling you in with what I like to call The Obligation Hook.
The Obligation Hook is the force that pulls you into things that you feel compelled to be a part of despite the lack of a positive impact on you. You can find Obligation Hooks in many things: TV shows, relationships, every conversation with every person you don’t know.
Sports have a strong Obligation Hook, because they instill in fans from an early age that if you stop supporting your team, you’re a fairweather piece of shit who wouldn’t know loyalty if it dunked on his head, and impregnated his girlfriend during a seven game road trip.
Because of that, a lot of us take pride in being a “real” fan.
“I haven’t missed a game since ’95. I’ve been here for the highs, the lows–everything. And no matter how much I was enjoying myself, or what else I needed to be doing, I stuck by the team and watched, and went on my message boards, and–OH FUCK WHERE DID MY LIFE GO.”
Think of how else you could spend all of this time. For that year of my life, I could have helped others. I could have made friends. I could have networked. Good God, maybe I’d have an actual career by now.
This could be you, so get out. Now. If I have to yell at you to get out because I know it’s what’s best for you a la the dog in Air Bud, I totally will.
Keep It Casual
At what point do we call this a mental illness? I mean I love my team. I do. I love a professional basketball team. I love this group of ever-changing large black men that I don’t know, and that love has left me sad, frustrated, and short a year of my life.
So maybe you don’t have to quit your fandom completely. Maybe stop short of being a weird psychopath like me. Don’t fall in love with your team. Keep your fandom casual. It hurts to say that because I hate casual fans more than ISIS (at least ISIS stands for something besides free T-shirts and pizzas during timeouts), but let’s look at this.
Say your team wins a championship someday. Here is what us superfans will really have to show for it:
1) A sense of accomplishment—an ability to say, “I did it. I sat, watched, invested years of my life, and now hear I am. With a championship…….T-shirt and DVD set. That I just bought for $39.99 from the thing on TV.”
2) A feeling that all of the time and disappointment were worth it.
But it’s not worth it. Think about it. You could be a real fan and jerk off for 44 years, and then have this amazing orgasm of triumph and joy when you win a championship. And it would be amazing.
Or you could waltz into casual fandom at 43 years and 350 days when the team gets good, cum a little less, still have a good time, and GET TO ACTUALLY LIVE FOR ANOTHER 43 YEARS AND 350 DAYS.
Or, OR–you could jerk off for your entire life with no payoff. You could die waiting your whole life for no championship–no light at the end of the tunnel. Just big, sad, blue balls. Congratulations.
So instead, maybe watch games when you feel like it, clap when you’re told to, and drink your $11 Coors. If your team wins it all, have one night where you have one extra beer and high five your stupid friends. I’ll wish you were dead, but you’ll be better off.
The Many Ways to Get Hooked
Even if you’re not into sports, you’ve probably been a victim. The Obligation Hook is everywhere: stupid traditions, boring friendships, abusive relationships.
We’ve all started watching a TV show, loved it, then stopped caring, and held on for the last four seasons because of a weird sense of obligation. You feel like you’ll miss it getting better again if you leave, so you just hang on, hour after hour, bitching about each episode more and more until finally…Dexter is a lumberjack, and you have to have a hard sitdown with yourself about why the fuck any of us bother to keep breathing on this planet.
You could have bailed years ago. It’s not 1974. TV shows don’t go away any more. If it got good again, you’d be able to find that out. But no, you had to keep watching because of the Obligation Hook. You couldn’t let go of something that took hours upon hours of your life and kept you from this amazing, magical world.
It’s the main reason people stay unhappily married. “Well we’ve come this far. For some reason, that means we should keep making ourselves sleep in the same bed until one of us doesn’t wake up.”
Just let go of the obligation. It doesn’t matter, and it’s damaging your life. We waste so much time because we don’t see that time is really our most valuable asset. You can literally do fucking anything with time. You can have awesome new experiences, or do really fun shit you know you love. You can jump out of a plane, or learn Italian, or see what happens when you take an LSD suppository.
But usually, we don’t. Usually, we spend our time like a pro athlete spends money. We waste it on nothing that matters over and over and over until we’re 42 with nothing to show for it, and we’re left going, “Fuck. Where did all my time go?”
Let’s try to prevent this. Some obligations are unavoidable. Most aren’t. Don’t let them take over your life. You can make your life valuable, and you can be better than this. So to those of you out there that are currently hooked, or about to be hooked, I have one thing to say to you.
And now, you are free.
