Rant of the Week: Obfuscation and you

Obfustate: verb 1. To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand:

One thing I noticed about the Friars are their near miraculous three game winning is that each team that lost to PC managed to give the Friars credit for their play without failing to criticize their own team. To me, this seemed like a fair and honest assessment - there's two reasons your team loses a game. The first is that they were outplayed. And the second is that your team failed to do what they were supposed to. To me, this is how most conversations about sporting events should be.

Sadly, this is not the case. It seems that in the vast majority of cases, a fan of a losing team will find some reason(usually idiotic) to not feel bad about losing the game. The most common excuse for losing is that the officials were "out to get you". I've made this excuse myself about 1,000 times. I'm only human. And sometimes, bad officiating seems to get out of hand. But looking at the situation rationally, I don't think the officials are out to get any team I root for. They're human, and they certainly do make mistakes. But unless David Stern really REALLY wants your team to lose (at least 30 sets of NBA fans should agree with me here) that's not a valid excuse. If the officials are bad, it usually affects both teams equally.

But the obfuscation people use to make themselves feel better that really gets me is the issue of "class". It's a fairly transparent ruse, but some people, in order to make themselves feel better for rooting for a team that lost will attack the players and other fans for being "classless". How pathetic can you get?

The purpose of sports is to win within the confines of the rules of the game. It is not to impress other people with your class. That has nothing to do with sports. While it would be nice if everyone could comport themselves like a reasonable human being, there are idiots out there who don't. And while these people should be criticized, it does not - I repeat - it DOES NOT suddenly mean that you're the better team because your team has more class. It just means that you're a classy loser. Hey, there's nothing wrong with losing a game. It's just a game, after all. And most of us will see more losses that wins. That's life.

I realize I have blogged about this a few times before. The overblown Spygate nonsense was obfuscation to make people feel better about losing to the Patriots. The Knicks tried to obfuscate losing to the Celtics by kvetching about "trash talk". And the Canadiens insane preoccupation with beating up Milan Luccic was a handy distraction, but was really much ado about nothing. But I just thought I should re-iterate that when you lose and you start complaining about class and so and so being a "dirty" player it's pretty obvious that you're trying to take the focus off of losing.

Ultimately, if your team loses, they lose. Obfuscating the issue by bringing class into it does nothing but make you look sad. Don't do it. Give credit to the teams who beat you and ignore the fools who attempt to change the subject when you beat them.

Random Rant:
-Only one this week. Hi Mark! Keep those comments coming!