I'm 47 years old and I'm not ashamed to say I don't understand how a point spread works, so I can tell you with some confidence that, for me, it's at least not the last one. And for most people it's not the thing about following a winner unless you're a fan of some specific teams in the unusual position of habitually winning at some point in its history. It sounds great as an idea, but the side-effect is you become a Laker fan or a Yankee fan or a Dallas Cowboys fan. I was going to lead into that with some modifiers to characterize the type, but I don't think there are any words in any thesaurus that are going to paint you a clearer word-picture of what I very specifically mean than "Laker fan."
Honestly though, indulging in sports-watching as a hobby doesn't have a lot to do with winning. Statistically speaking, nobody ever wins. Well, that's not true in the mathematical sense in that, in every single contest, 50% of the people competing win.* but overall only one team in any given league actually wins anything in any given year. If you're lucky, like in baseball or the NBA, that's at best a 1 in 30 chance. Lower in the NFL. Technically better if you're following Major League Soccer, but that's currently 1 in 28 and they seem to be adding somewhere between two and 40 new teams each year, depending on which community they can extort for a stadium and an expansion fee each year. Pre-emptive congratulations to the eventual MLS champ, Atletico Fort Wayne United F.C. Your time will come.
In the meantime, you engage to the extent you can manage the hours and the sweat. You invest to the extent your crystalline heart can withstand, and then probably an extra 5-10% because there are no stakes if you can't end up shattered a little. But unless you're a violent narcissist or an angry drunk, it's a safe and life-affirming way to spend your emotional energy. It distracts from the bad stuff and bonds you to the good stuff, assuming you like your family the way I like the two of my three kids who give a shit and live and die with this nonsense with me when it's on.** And it's healthiest when everyone understands it doesn't matter at all. It is, as Liverpool F.C. manager Jürgen Klopp called "the most important least important thing."
As I said, statistically speaking, your team always loses. But that doesn't lessen the effect. The losing bonds you as much as anything, sometimes moreso--or even necessarily moreso as, often, that's all you have. Just ask any Chicago Cubs fan, though that's a shit example since 2016.
Or you could just ask me. As I said earlier, I'm 47 years old and have been a fan of MANY sports in that time. I'm the kind of sports masochist that believes you root for whomever the geographical fates have determined for you, so as a kid I went Angels-Rams-Clippers (sort of, these were the Donald Sterling years, so only real perverts would commit to that)-Kings/Ducks (because nobody really gives that much of a shit about SoCal hockey). That changed when the Rams left and became some other region's problem (and Super Bowl champion, the dicks), so I picked up the Chargers, then slinked back to the Rams again the minute they betrayed yet another town, but this time in my favor. In all that time, I've had exactly two (2) opportunities to even root for my team in a championship: the Angels in 2002 and the Rams in 2019.*** And of those, I only experienced actually winning something in 2002.
That was just up until this past Sunday. I can't really tell you what I felt when the Rams won. I had a ton of family in town for a wedding. I had just been told during the game by my brother-in-law that we had all been exposed to COVID at the wedding the day before. I was surrounded by mostly strangers (they were all at the wedding too, so fuck it, I stayed). My oldest son was drunk, so he cried. Mostly I felt like I'd been hit in the face with an oar. But not in a bad way! This is not a great explanation. I can't really describe the numbness, the absence of feeling. I think it was just anathema to my experience as a sport-watcher and a team-haver. This just doesn't happen. So I'm not sure I believe it yet. I think I'm getting closer. I've watched a half dozen or so highlight recaps. I recognize the helmet logos and the uniforms a little bit more every time I see the plays I've mostly memorized by now, and every time it's a slow-burn "Holy shit, that's... the Rams?"
One of these days I'll get it and I'll lose the question mark. For now, the math has ceased to be its logical, withholding self and actually given me something novel to wrap my brain around. But that's been my relationship with math most of my life anyway, in all contexts: confounding, frightening, catalyst to an existential questioning of my value and values as a human. Like everything else practical in life, it's made up entirely of fucking inscrutable variables, but the good thing about sports is it does have measurable numbers in it. Like 23-20. It looks simple, but I may never figure it out.
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*We're disallowing draws in this example because they're mostly un-American and confounding. You can't lord it over anyone if your side comes out with the exact same score. How else are you supposed to know which one of you has made the correct life choices up until the next time the same two teams meet again?
**I have one who couldn't give less of a shit about sports of any kind, but that doesn't mean I don't bond with him or love him less. I just learned to speak intelligently about whatever's in the Steam store and we're good. I could do more, but I'm not getting into fucking anime.
***I wasn't yet watching football in 1980 when the Rams played the Steelers in Super Bowl XIV. At that point, my interests were still definitely in the G.I. Joe direction. If nothing else, toy soldier prepared me for a lifetime of sports-as-war metaphors.
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