Another Super Bowl come and gone and my boys truly don’t care. They didn’t care when our home team, the Philadelphia Eagles, beat the NY Giants to make it to the NFC Championship game. And they didn’t even notice that the Birds lost to the other birds, the Cardinals, two weeks ago. Come to think of it, they didn’t have much of reaction to our Phillies winning the World Series this year except that they got homework passes from their teachers, who like many around here truly did rejoice.
My sons are not sports fans.
So I ask myself, is loving the game genetic? Or is it learned? Nature or nurture? Why can some little boys sit and watch entire games, transfixed on the action, savvy on the stats, and with a twinkle in their eye while others will offer a cursory glance as they move through the family room on their way to pastimes more appealing? Mind you these latter types are the same boys who go to baseball games, sit in their seats for 4 minutes before they ask to get their souvenir.
It would be one thing if Dave was not a sports fan. But I think he qualifies, as the noises that came out of that man last night compelled me to check to make sure there was not a stripper or diabiloical intruder having their way with him in our den. Thankfully, he is not one of “those men” whose happiness and entire being depends on a wining team. Those guys are a little creepy and I’m relieved my boys will never become one of them.
But Dave’s love of spectator sports also shoots down the theory that you have to have played the sport to enjoy watching it. Aside from a stint in college on the club ice hockey team, Dave is not a team player. (That’s not a dig, honey. It’s just a fact.)
Maybe it depends on whether your city has sports teams that actually have a shot at winning. Philly has been a bit lacking in that category until recently. But how does that explain the Red Sox? I swear every kid in New England is a sports fan despite the fact that the Sox endured “the curse” for so long.
Or maybe Dave and I are not providing the required encouragement to sit down and watch? We do not cajole, suggest, convince or bribe. But perhaps the “try it, you might like it” approach is one to take.
My final theory – the one that I am going to go with – is that perhaps sports watching is an acquired taste and doesnt really set in until later in life - like guacamole. The talk around the lunchroom tables in elementary school is still more centered around video games than Super Bowl games. But as that changes, my guys may want to tune in so that they can be relevant, which leads me to my follow up, and still unanswered question:
Is fandom a requirement for mandom?