Knowing me now, as the few of you who even read this do, you might be surprised to know that as a child I actually spent my time fairly evenly divided between being a bookworm hermit, and playing outside.
When I was little, I was an outdoors kid a lot of the time, being very in to bike riding, seek and destroy in the woods, and various highly imaginative games that usually involved lots of running around. Not only that, but I harbored a secret desire to be a baseball player some day. (Not softball). In high school I did 5 years of cross country, 2 1/2 of soccer, 4 of indoor track and 2 1/2 of outdoor track. I tried out for softball but discovered that I was really bad at it.
So what happened? Why am I suddenly the epitome of anti-sports? Why does football season annoy me so very much? Why am I so supremely un-attracted to guys who watch sports all day long? Why do jocks make the number 1 spot on the top of my annoying people list?
This story may answer these questions.
For any of you in Utah, you probably know who Jimmer is. For any of you not here, you probably wonder why I'm talking about a car repair tool or a kind of dance.
90% of the pics had him making all these weird faces. This was the best I could do.
For those people, no, Jimmer is neither of those things. Jimmer is an actual name of an actual person. I'm still just hoping it's a bad nickname, and not the one his parents actually gave him. But I'm new to this whole story, so I don't know details yet.
Anyway...
Aside from the fact that he looks exactly like every other jock I've ever met, I have nothing against Jimmer. I'm sure he's a perfectly normal sports fanatic. I have nothing at all to say about his character, because I don't know him. But here's a story that happened about him which completely personifies my intense dislike for the sporting world.
Not so long ago the byu campus newspaper printed some sort of article extolling the virtues of Jimmer. And some girl wrote back to the editorial column about how this Jimmer obsession has become a form of unhealthy idol worship and threw in some sort of scripture reference to back up her analogy.
I didn't read any of this. I've just been told the skeletal details.
Granted, if even I, as a non-student, non-sports fan, and non-socialite has had Jimmer's name crop up FREAKING EVERYWHERE, obviously people are getting a little carried away. But that's beside the point. The point is what happened to this girl.
After this little editorial blurb, she was inundated with hate mail. Return editorials. Facebook stalking. You name it, it happened. The newspaper didn't print anything at all in her defense. Just slam after slam after slam.
I would like to take a moment here to point out that I am not saying that she was right. Neither am I saying that the slammers were right. In fact, I think they were both wrong and both stupid. Now to continue.
And this is why I despise sports so much. The fans. This girl posted an opinion in the newspaper. Maybe it was arrogant. Maybe it was pretentious. Maybe it was just an opinion, people. Even when people have stupid opinions, we, as the other side, have no right whatsoever to stalk them on facebook for the sole purpose of sending anonymous hate mail. We have no right, in a newspaper, to not continue to print both sides of a story. We have no right to be utterly cruel to someone, even if they are retarded and may even deserve it.
But sports do this to people all the time. In my 7 1/2 years since I've come to BYU, none of the sports figures have been famous enough for me to actually know their names. This is a first, and that's the only reason I looked into the story in the first place. Because if even I am inundated with some dude with a bad name, obviously he's got to be really, really, really, really, bordering-on-royalty popular.
Turns out he is.
But yeah, this hasn't happened before. So, like I said, maybe people are getting carried away. I don't know the details. I just know that Jimmer's name is even plastered on the wall of the wilk bowling alley right now. Which is weird and annoying to me.
But heaven forbid anyone disagree with this hero worship! *DRAMATIC COLLAPSE TO THE FLOOR*
Some girl felt that this was a bad thing. Right or wrong, it was her opinion. And right or wrong, we should respect other people and treat them properly, even if we are also trying to convince them to change their mind. But no! People jumped on her like a herd of sharks in a blood frenzy. People were rude and cruel and purposefully seeking out ways to hurt her for what she said. You don't just accidentally find some stranger on facebook and type out a hurtful message. Things like that are not something that you can just "not mean to do".
Query: How does this make them any better than she was?
Answer: It doesn't.
Here's another example. A lady at work got to let her sons go to a BYU game recently. They were really excited because that didn't get to happen much. I think, if I am correct, that the youngest one had never been before. So it was all sorts of a big deal.
Whilst at the game, something started to go badly. They lost, I think. And when this happened, all of these people that were previously congenial, friendly, and normal in every way somehow transformed into hideous monsters. Cussing, shouting, screaming, furious fits of anger. One of the guys there with the boys had to turn around to the people behind them and be like "dude, there are kids in front of you. Censor yourself a little, please."
The oldest son later said something to the effect of that he would have really enjoyed the game if it hadn't been for all the horrible fans.
Amen brother.
And THAT is why I hate sports. Not because I have anything against the idea of playing football or basketball or soccer. Not because I hate or am jealous of mr. Jimmer. Not because I dislike athletic activity. Not even because I don't understand them. I hate sports because of the fans. Because of what the competitive hysteria does to people. Because of the cruel, angry, obsessive monsters that people turn into over a game. Because of the arrogance and self righteousness and annoying self centeredness that people get when they win a game.
Will Armageddon happen tomorrow if someone doesn't give a crap about who Jimmer is? NO. Will the world self destruct if someone writes an opinion in the newspaper that most people don't agree with? NO. Will we be struck down with lightning from above if we lose a game? NO. But people act like all of this stuff is set in stone or something.
Blah-de-blah-de-blah.
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