With Superbowl Sunday around the corner it’s a good time to remind my wife how lucky she is.
I grew up a passionate, though not rabid, sports fan. My favorite sports were (and still are) baseball and hockey, with football and basketball a distant third and fourth.
I grew up in New York, but now live in the Midwest. This is important (in this context) for two reasons: first, since my favorite teams don’t play in the local market there is a limited number of occasions to watch them on television. Second, in the New York City area, professional sports were king, at least in the circles I traveled. We just didn’t really get into college sports.
What does this mean for me as a sports fan and husband today? I have plenty of friends who love – I mean love – football. College, professional, high school. It doesn’t matter. And when autumn comes around these guys seem to spend ten hours a day on Saturday watching college football and ten hours on Sunday watching professional football. When college basketball and the NBA come around the same thing occurs.
Since I don’t have an interest in college football and my NFL team is only on national television a few times a year, my wife knows that my weekends are not geared towards hanging in the man cave. Baseball, hockey – same thing, though spread out over the entire week.
In addition to that, I generally keep sports in perspective. If my team loses – even in the biggest of big games – I’m usually not thinking about it too much the next day. If I have to miss my favorite team on television I can survive. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. But I do try to keep it in perspective. Sports are entertainment, a diversion; not life.
Okay, so perhaps I exaggerate when proclaiming that these factors should make my wife feel lucky. In fact, it’s a two-way street. Because I don’t plan significant portions of my free time around sports, on those occasions that I do want to watch a game my wife recognizes the relative rarity of the event. How our free time is spent during those hours almost never becomes a point of contention.
Every once in a while my awesome wife, who really isn’t in to sports at all, will make an effort to watch a game with me and try to engage. And while she may ask me what quarter the hockey game is in, how many runs the football team has scored or who’s winning while overtime is still being played, her willingness to participate makes me feel similar to the way I imagine she must feel every time I join her in watching a Reese Witherspoon or Kate Hudson movie: it doesn’t matter what we’re doing. What matters is that we’re doing it together.
(Photo Credit: http://thesportsfanjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/man-and-woman-watching-football-together.jpg)
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