January 2021

As I write this, an hour and a half or so has passed since the Packers lost to the Bucs in the NFC Championship Game at Lambeau Field. What I feel is pain. In my lungs, in my heart, in my head. When I breathe, there’s this heaviness on my inhale like it just hurts to keep moving forward in this alternate reality I’ve landed in where the Packers aren’t going to the Super Bowl. On my exhale, I’ve observed a jittering pattern, interrupted half-way through in the split second of my out breath where I remember once again that we’ve lost. My heart has sunk to the very bottom of my chest and seemingly taken the rest of it down with it, it so very heavy. In my head remains a raging ache from the stress of the game. My head is the worst offender of these three body parts rebelling against this reality I find myself in. It is the one which tortures me not only with physical pain but also with mental pain – it shows me what would have happened had Mike Pettine called a reasonable defensive scheme on the last play of the first half, what would have happened had Matt LaFleur stuck with the run/short passes on offense after back to back interceptions by our defense, what would have happened had the referees called the WR/DB matchups consistently all game. These videos I play in my head all end in the Packers winning. For the briefest of moments, this imagined victory and the gut feeling that my team really was the better team capture my thoughts. And then I am returned to reality.

Why do we, as sports fans, commit ourselves so thoroughly to people we don’t know in a sport where only 1 out of 32 teams can win? In almost every year, you are guaranteed defeat. For fans of perennial losing teams, this means never even making it to the playoffs. For fans of successful teams, it means gut wrenching playoff defeats, Championship game Ls or worse, Super Bowl losses. And when the dust is all settled; we as fans pick ourselves back up again and rear up for the NFL Draft, tempted by the thoughts of the offseason that our beloved team needs to have to be right back in the mix the next year. We spend hours, days, watching, reading, rooting for, armchair GMing, armchair coaching. All of this for the uncertain chance that maybe, just maybe this is “my team’s year”.

When the moment comes, sometimes your team is blown out like the Packers in the 2016 and 2019 NFC Championship Games. These don’t really sting as bad because truly, the better team won. But sometimes your team lets victory slip right through its hands, just like Brandon Bostick on a botched onside kick recovery in the 2014 NFC Championship Game. Or sometimes your team really wants to prevail against all the odds and find a way to lose by letting Ray Allen hit a game-tying 3 pointer with 5.2 seconds left in Game 6 of the 2013 NBA finals up 3-2. Or sometimes your team blows it at home with a series of unfortunate shot-in-your-own-damn-foot moments like the 2020 Packers. These are all gut wrenching defeats and at the end of the day, you, as the sports fan have zero control over these people you care about so much.

So I ask again, why? Why do we do this to ourselves? In all of the irrationality of sports fandom I must return again to the moments where everything, all of the heartbreak, pain, punched and abused pillows, non-optimal breathing, surely life-shortening stress, tears, thrown remotes, dogs (and boyfriends) scared away by those absolutely, god-fucking-damnit terrible-ass fucking shit calls by these blind motherfucking referees – all of this is worth it for those fleeting moments of success. Those moments captured by teams like the 2010 Green Bay Packers or the 2014 San Antonio Spurs. In these moments, against all odds your team finds a way to be the last team standing. It is because the odds are so low, the pain so high, that the ultimate victory is so sweet.

Today’s defeat stings, but I’m here for life. I don’t know what the future holds but I will move forward with hope that we will one day hoist the Lombardi again. Go Pack Go!

– theMonthlyJamm | January 24, 2021

PS: Recommendation thanks to Joe for Mind Over Matter and Christina for KISSLETOE!