For sports fans all across the country their worst nightmare is missing the big game. Now imagine a fan not only missing a year’s worth of big games, but also in that time everything even remotely related to sports. No ESPN, no sports-talk radio, no reading the sports page, no fantasy football, and especially not any seats in the bleachers. Would it be possible in our sports-obsessed society to avoid it all for a year – let alone survive the ordeal? This was the monumental question Mathew DeKinder, a certifiable sports nut, took on and chronicled in “Wait ‘Till Next Year: A Die-Hard Fan’s Year Without Sports.”
Having found that being a sports fan took up a massive amount of free time, not to mention the life-or-death reactions to the games themselves, the author hoped to gain a healthy dose of perspective – or at the very least the ability to stop punching holes in the walls of the den after a soul-crushing loss, by avoiding the world of fan culture for a year.
This undertaking, which even the most casual sports fan would consider damn-near herculean, was at times discouraging, surprising, hilarious and even satisfying. But more than anything, the result is a book for all those embittered souls who have ever turned off their television or stormed out of a stadium vowing “never again!” after having their hearts broken by a tough loss. This book provides a better understanding of the emotional roller coaster fans willingly place themselves on and proves that ultimately if you can keep the insanity in check, it is all worth it – win or lose.
Mathew DeKinder is an award-winning columnist and critic who has been writing for newspapers for over 10 years. He is currently writing for The Suburban Journals of St. Louis.
Mathew grew up in Bethany, Oklahoma, just outside of Oklahoma City before going on to graduate from Oklahoma State University with a degree in journalism.
Mathew currently resides in St. Louis with his wife and two children.
College basketball season represented a turn towards the homestretch for me. While I only stood at the halfway point as far as my year was concerned, I knew I just had to make it through the beginning of baseball season and then I could coast through the rest of the summer. But basketball season was a bit of a concern as it can invariably be the most crazy-making. Of the holy trinity of American sport (football, baseball, basketball) there is something in the setup and structure of the game of basketball that can lead its fans to be the most unhinged. To really understand the full scope of my argument, I think it’s best to look at the different sports from a religious standpoint – and keep your “Jeter is God” comments to yourself.
Football is most like Catholicism. It is very structured, very ritualistic and has a very wide reach. Once a week everyone gets together – alcohol is provided – and then begins the eternal struggle with the weight of original sin, a.k.a. the decision to punt on fourth and inches. This type of abuse can only be tolerated every seven days, allowing one to return to the weekday world before devoutly recommitting oneself over the weekend.
Baseball, on the other hand is like Zen Buddhism. With so many games in a season baseball fans will typically see a single win or loss as of little consequence in the grand scheme of the universe. It has also been observed that a Sunday-afternoon doubleheader has a comparable excitement level as watching someone engage in deep meditation. Philistines. Snatch this Dodger Dog from my hand Grasshopper and you shall achieve true enlightenment.
As for basketball, I would say it falls somewhere between Snake Handlers and the Heaven’s Gate cult. Basketball is just a crazy game to begin with. No lead is ever really safe, massive point swings are common, the coaches all look like they are about to lose their shit and to top it all off there are all these damn lights and buzzers going off. It’s like some bizarre astronaut stress test. Then to make matters worse, you aren’t protected by the relaxing week off that football fans enjoy. A basketball game can come at you anytime: Saturday, Thursday, Tuesday, who knows? To top it all off we have the NCAA Tournament, which is like a giant tent revival where all of these crazies gather together and you’re just as likely to see them drop to the floor in convulsions while speaking in tongues. No wonder sports had stretched me so thin, I belonged to three major religions. It all just depended on what time of year you caught me: be it the self-flagellation of fall, the inner peace of summer, or the wide-eyed fanaticism of March.
I know what it is to be seduced by the madness of basketball as I worshiped in one of its grandest temples – Gallagher-Iba Arena. Oklahoma State is not only fairly regularly competitive in basketball, but there is actually a tradition of excellence in the sport.The arena is a crazy place. For most of the time I was enrolled at OSU the old arena was in pretty much the same form it had been in since it was constructed in the 1930s. That meant that it had a capacity of only a few more than 6,000 people, but that also meant that there literally wasn’t a bad seat in the house. This is not an environment you want to introduce a sports nut to.
Standing in the student section of Gallagher-Iba Arena is as close as I will ever get to competing in a major sporting event. When you’re jumping up and down only 15 feet from a point-guard and screaming your lungs out while he’s trying to set up the offense with eight seconds left on the clock, you’ve become a part of the game, this is not unlike crack to a sports fanatic. Of course there is a down side to this level of fan proximity, especially if Ron Artest is playing for the opposing team. Being a spectator at a sporting event is sort of like visiting the zoo. You can get an up close and personal look at lions and bears and crocodiles and behave in any manner you see fit without the worry of getting a detailed inspection of any of these creatures’ gastro-intestinal tracts. But being court-side at a basketball game can be like unwittingly finding yourself standing inside the cage. In what other sport could a four-foot tall director from Brooklyn actively mess with an all-star during the course of a game? Only basketball provides such an intimate level of sideline shit-talking.
I remember being at one game in college and a referee had made several egregious calls in the first half. At halftime he had to walk only a few feet in front of my friend and I on his way to the locker room. We were booing and yelling at him as he was walking our way when suddenly he locked eyes with us. As he approached it became clear that he was – in fact – a very large man, most likely a former player, and that the only real distance between us and a world-class ass kicking was a lone referee’s sense of self-control. We simultaneously stopped yelling, broke eye contact and began innocently looking around as if to say “Gee, someone around here sure is making a lot of noise saying rude things to what is obviously a very decent and kind referee. I wonder who it is?” We backed down faster than a Frenchman guarding the Maginot Line. As sports fans we usually enjoy a sense of separation, but that sense gets thrown out the window with a couple of good seats to a basketball game – serving to make its crazy fans that much crazier. Why do you think Jack Nicholson behaves so strangely? It’s those court-side Lakers tickets that have driven him mad.