She Started Dancin' to that Fine, Fine Music

21 November 2006

Arsenal 3 – 1 Hamburg SV (Champion’s League)
Van der Vaart 4’ (A)
Van Persie 52’ (F)
Eboue 83’ (F)
Baptista 88’ (F)

The line for this game tells you right away it was exciting. Arsenal goes down four minutes in—that’s some horseshit right there. But we’re tenacious, and early in the second half we get an equalizer. Then we come back to settle that goal differential into something that looks appealing, and we’re well on our way out of the group stage in the Champion’s League. Fantastic! If only we could, you know, have won this eventually. Writing retrospectively on matches like this is a bit like knowing we’re all mortal: sure, the victory seems awesome at the time, but we end up losing everything come February. This is one of the fundamental philosophical lessons that sports teach us, one of the mantras that, while cliché, feel so powerful as a sports season begins to wind down. The end of a season is incredibly depressing: when it’s late October, and baseball has just wrapped up the World Series, life suddenly seems a little bit empty: it is, in fact, like breaking up with someone. There’s a void in your life, left by the thing—or person—that you had grown so used to, so comfortable with. You thought it would be there every day, but one day, it’s gone, like mist on a cool morning. For a while, you simply miss it; God, I wish the Yankees were playing today. It gives every day some kind of verve, an extra spice. It might be a shitty day at work, but the Yanks are taking the field, and “Come onnnnnn Yankees! Spank them D-Rays!” You settle into the three-hour long chess match that is a baseball game. When there aren’t any games on television, well fuck. What do you do now? It’s the same with soccer: all week, I look forward to Arsenal’s match on the weekend. When the season is really bustling, they have a game every three or four days. When the game is over, you have to pick everything up and get back to real life. If you lose, well, there’s always the next game. That’s the cliché, the motto that reverberates through sports. It is spectacularly reassuring. It is one of the prime reasons I love sports to such a crazy degree, the kind of reinforcement that it engenders. Maybe that’s sad, maybe that’s pathetic: but I would argue that it is the same kind of feelings that religion evokes. Only sports, my religion, do it on live television. That is why it can’t be beat; that is why I attend church in the form of the stadium, read gospel in the form of sport history, and give thanks in the form of loyalty to my teams. Today has been a great day. My week started off rough, as I made a couple of embarrassing bungles at work. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say, I felt very stressed. Last night I got a lot a pretty solid sleep, for the first time in a number of days, probably in about a week, and that was a good omen: all wrongs have been righted, and work is once more flowing smoothly. I feel in control, no longer drowning. Suddenly, I’m confident in my ability to be an editor, a wonderful feeling considering earlier this week I had seriously started to question my ability at the job. Things are good, and they’re about to get better. Tomorrow marks the beginning of “the greatest sports tournament on Earth.” Yes, you guessed—March fucking Madness starts in a little under 20 hours. My bracket for the office pool is still not set: I’ve decided on my Final Four (I think), but beyond that, I’m still queasy. Specifically, I’m worried about Georgetown versus Texas A&M. Georgetown is technically, I know, the better offense. But there’s a stat that has begun to bug me: their tempo. They averaged 59.7 possessions this season, literally one of the lowest in all of Division 1 basketball. Texas A&M meanwhile was somewhere in the middle with 65.7 possessions on average. You’re probably going, “well, that’s just a difference of 6 possessions; big deal!” It is a big deal, when you consider that it means anywhere from 5-9 additional points. Furthermore, if Texas A&M controls the tempo, Georgetown might get sloppy, costing them more points. At 59.7 possessions, they have to be used to nice and slow games; speeding it up will cause confusion. Finally, I like Texas A&M because I think picking them to go to the championship is a bit of a unique call, but not an entirely bad one; uniqueness wins brackets, but stupidity can lose them. Texas A&M is a three-seed, and three-seeds have won the whole thing twice in the last four years. That said, I think Kansas can beat them. So, Kansas and Texas A&M? I’m loathe to write this, because in two weeks time I might look back at it and smash my head against a wall. I might also be hailed as a prophet. Tempo isn’t a huge dividing factor: if you look at a list of the 336 teams in Division 1, the 64 teams that made it in the tournament are scattered up and down it like pepper on a steak. But Georgetown is the third slowest team in the tournament. That bugs me. That rubs me all kinds of wrong. And today’s been a good day, hasn’t it? Is that a sign? Today’s been a good day, so my basketball picks will, by extension, also be good? It’s dicey though! I’m nervous. I’ve spent way too much time researching the bracket this year. I’m just about sick of it. All right, fuck it: let’s do it. Kansas and Texas A&M in the final, and Kansas grinds them into the ground (note, although this isn’t why I’m predicting a Kansas win: Kansas’ tempo is 69.5 possessions on average, one of three teams much more in line with what the winner’s tempo has been for the last few years). If I win my office pool, I make $75. This is important, people! Sure, I could blow $75 in a weekend—but the respect, well, that’ll last as long as this job does. This has been a very analysis intensive entry, and for that I apologize: although I do feel like it helps to get into the mindset of a sports fan. Now you know what I’ve been thinking about for four days straight. When I go to bed, I lie in bed, and I worry about my bracket. When I’m driving to work, I’m pondering: Can UNC really beat Texas? Can UNC last that long? Hansbrough’s got a busted nose! I described it like this, for my mom: filling out a bracket for the Big Dance is like a crossword puzzle. A sports crossword puzzle that’s incredibly fucking difficult. My friend surmised a few hours ago that, with all the brain-power we spend analyzing and thinking about the Tournament, we could get a man to Jupiter in two weeks. He’s probably not far off base, especially if we used all the money that was bet on the Tournament as well (roughly 2.5 billion a year—more than the Super Bowl). The point is, a good day at work and the eve of my favorite sports event have combined to make me a happy camper. I feel refreshed and reinvigorated. Eyes wide open, looking forward to the future. You know why? The very same day that the Tournament climaxes, baseball season officially starts. And there’s nothing better than seeing an old friend walk into the room, sit down, and start up a conversation.