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 Andy Rooney on Sports
The Triumph Of A Sports Fan
Andy Rooney - from Common NON Sense
People who aren't sports fans don't understand sports fans and, as a sports fan, I can understand that.
Being a sports fan is mindless. What non-fans don't understand is, the mindlessness of it is what's so attractive. It isn't hard to be a sports fan, you don't have to think much-or even think at all, really. It doesn't cost anything to watch a game on television or read about it in a newspaper. Who wins doesn't matter and when someone gets hired or fired, the sports fan may find it interesting but it doesn't make a damn bit of difference to the fan's life or income.
When watching a game, the fan may get emotionally involved by hoping, or even cheering, for one of the contestants but, in the end, who wins and who loses does not have any effect whatsoever on the fan's life. The drama is contrived.
After a New York Giants football game last year, I felt vaguely depressed because they lost. I got thinking about it and started laughing. Why did I care? It was fun to go to the game and I went, not to see the Giants win but to see the game played. I did have one big winner the day Green Bay beat the Giants in their last game and I'll tell you about it with the hope that I don't end up in prison because of it.
January 6th was a nasty cold day. The temperature was in the '30s and there was a threat of rain. I enjoy defeating the weather's attempt to make me uncomfortable and I knew I had to bring enough clothes to keep me both warm and dry.
The "security" measures include a prohibition against fans carrying in any kind of a bag or container. You could not carry a canvas bag with clothes, a thermos or sandwich bag. This does more for the sale of the bad and expensive concession stand food than it does for security.
I was determined to bring hot chicken broth to drink at halftime no matter what the restrictions were so I filled a thermos. In my arms I carried an extra jacket, a down-filled vest and a four-by-four-foot Mylar blanket with which to cover myself in the event of rain.
As I stood in the mob pushing through the security funnel, I watched the guard scanning fans with his magic wand. He invariably had a fan hold his hands over his head so he could run his scanner up and down under his arms, looking for lethal weapons. I knew my thermos might be confiscated and I was plenty nervous about losing my chicken soup.
I needed a plan. What would a terrorist trying to get a thermos of chicken soup past a guard do in a situation like this, I asked myself. As I watched the actions of the security guard, a devious plan formed in my head. I tied a loose knot in the sleeve of the extra jacket and dropped the thermos down the sleeve.
Just as I got to the guard, I deliberately dropped the slippery Mylar blanket at his feet. He instinctively bent over to pick it up and, although I hated myself for taking advantage of a polite guard, I thanked him, held my arms, jacket, chicken soup and all, high over my head so he could scan my rib cage.
"Go ahead!" he said.
In my seat, I was the envy of all my friends who have been sitting around me at Giants Stadium for 25 years now. They all wanted to know how I got my chicken soup to the game and I was so embarrassed by the deviousness of my tactics, I didn't tell them.
I just smiled-and sipped my soup. |
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