The Big Game

The big game. A bunch of oversized men on illegal muscle stimulants. Bats cracking and helmets smashing. A gaggle of mid-twenties guys in tight pants, spitting and packing chew. The big game is approaching. It’s still weeks away, but you can tell it is getting closer. The grocery stores tell us: a spinnable tower of useless sports rousers grace each entry. Every radio and television station gives countless hours of coverage to everyone from the coach to the guy who cleans up that spat and packed chew.

The questions are always the same, Who’s dominating this year? How do you guys feel going into the big game? What are you doing to prepare? And the answers are just as high and philosophic: 1.) we are 2.) confident and 3.) focusing on the game. Same answers every single time. There is no change in the way they answer the same monotonous inquiries. It is simply a different player in a different jersey on a different day.

The frenzied hysteria approaching the big game is worth millions and millions of dollars in advertising, television airtime, big game paraphernalia, not to mention the tickets themselves. Which, of course, depends on the tickets you are referring to: the pre-game, game or post-game festivities.

Just think how much better off we are investing so much into the big game. I cannot remember which teams played last year. But I can tell you what I ate that night. I cannot tell you if T.O. was reinjured, but I could tell you at who’s house we were watching him. I will not be able to recall the score, but I will jump up and exclaim it was ME! who scored a triple Yahtzee during halftime.

It is not so much the big game that we crave, rather the anticipation buried beneath the drone of computers and too-long workdays and our own boredom. In the anticipation, we find others also gathered helplessly hoping for camaraderie, community and connectedness. It is refreshing to have a delicate pat on the bottom in the spirit of anticipation.

Hey Mr. Overpaid sports guy? It does not matter who wins. The world does not depend on the spread. We forget the scores tomorrow. We only care that there is a game. The significant event comes in laughing around a bowl of chips, sending e-mails to the gang about Chris falling into the coffee table while re-enacting the big catch and the heart-to-heart in the other room that had nothing to do with any game anywhere.

The big game simply reveals our natural need to be together. If it were not the big game, it would have to be something. All kinds of people, some with criminal backgrounds, some with sordid sexual histories, they all gather around the big game. Perhaps a birth or a wedding or an out-of-this-world baby in a manger. Something.

It stirs us to rally. It gets us to stand behind something. It gets some to just stand.