How I Changed my Mind About Gonzaga Basketball
March 14, 2013 
3 Comments
The Gonzaga Basketball team, right? (Photo from gonzaga.edu)
When Gonzaga Basketball got it’s number one ranking in the nation, I emphatically thought to myself, “Meh” and returned to obsessively scanning pictures of sea otters on the internet. College level sports have never been my thing, predominately because I assume that everyone on the team is just like the asshats that were on my high school’s basketball team. Whether or not that assumption is true, I still found myself planted on a bar stool with a friend asking the bar tender to change the channel to the Zags game.
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ME?
Decades of intentional disenfranchisement and snark down the toilet with one simple question. After I dealt with my existential crisis, I realized that the point of sports has nothing to do with sports. The point is to bring us all together to rally around one idea (also to take our money, but that’s beside the warm-fuzzy point I’m trying to make.)
I’m proud of Spokane all the time, but I’m proud in the way a parent would be when their 25-year-old son finally moves out; Proud, but you don’t go telling your friends at bridge club. The presence of high caliber sports teams makes it possible to be proud of Spokane in the “My son just graduated from Harvard” way.
It’s not the game, it’s the people. I can have conversations in the grocery store line in ways I never had been able to before, conversations about people no one really knows, but we feel like they’re on our team.
I’m setting myself up for accusations of being a fair weather fan, which are probably warranted, but I can finally see the value in a team we can love (and occasionally hate) together.
I just can’t wait for college debate to get this kind of attention– now that’s a g-dang blood bath.
About the Author
Its hard to accept but true. They are fun to watch and help bridge so many divides in our community. All of us library monitors in the world wish them every success…
College debate “meh”
They are all like the asshats I knew in high school…
I was a Coug fan well before Gonzaga rose to the big-time. Maybe that’s why I just haven’t gotten into the Zags. However, if they started wearing capes, they’d play like they were super heroes. Then I think I’d get very interested. I know it works because I’m a runner and after I started wearing a cape, I got so fast.