Stop the Madness!

There was a time in my life that I would never miss an Indiana University men’s basketball game.

I’ve been a true fan of two sports teams: the Chicago Cubs and the Indiana Hoosiers. 

With the Cubs, it’s easy.  Once you’ve become immunized against the expectations of them winning, they are great fun to root for.  You can check in here and there.  Watch a game on a quiet Sunday afternoon.  Visit Wrigley and know you’re in the best park in baseball.  Check the standings and the stats every once and a while and never really feel like you missed an important pitch.  It’s why until their World Series win in fall of 2016 (the most amazing fall ever), being a fan of the “Lovable Losers” was more of a sun-soaked, Budweiser-fueled hobby than a passion.

The Hoosiers, on the other hand, have always been a little different.

I became a Hoosier fan in probably the worst possible way, but probably a way in which a lot of people come to root for a team.  I hopped on a national championship bandwagon in 1987 at the mature age of 12, and it was all downhill from that moment. 

I remember pretty clearly my mother looking on at me during that NCAA tournament run and wondering what this sport had done to her son.  The tantrums and tears and screams.  The sprints to my bedroom to slam a disintegrating nerf ball into the hoop above my door, just like Dean Garrett had done.  The endless obsession with my brackets and the fate of colleges I’d never even heard of before. 

In the championship game alone, I think I adopted seven different personalities: Angry Matthew (that’s what my mom did and still does call me.  The Matthew part.  Not the angry part), Depressed Matthew, Optimistic Matthew, Excited Matthew, Resigned Matthew, Enraged Matthew, and ultimately, with Keith Smart’s swish from the corner, Ecstatic Matthew.  I was a fan for life, with the highest and most unrealistic expectations possible.

For most of my life after that championship Monday, every time the Hoosiers were on TV that 12-year boy has been watching, with all the maturity and composure you would attribute to one.  And, since the last national title the Indiana Hoosiers won happened on that night in 1987, and there have been some pretty rough patches of play along the way, I’m sure you can imagine that more times than not my behavior before the screen has been nothing to emulate.

So then here comes the real problem: kids.

Despite my wife’s surprising patience with basketball-induced adult temper tantrums, like with most things in life, kids change everything.

Smashed garbage can lids (after #1 Indiana’s last-second loss to Illinois on a backdoor layup in 2013) and a broken hand from punching the arm of the couch (Google: Boxer’s fracture) are just flashes in time and funny stories to share with others later, until you look over through your irrational rage and see a child copying your every mood and move.

A few years back, I looked over at my youngest son as he was screaming and slamming through an Indiana basketball game he had really very little interest in or understanding of.

“What is the matter with this kid?” I thought.  “He’s crazy.  Worse yet, he’s ruining the game.”

“Hey!  Calm down,” I said.  “It’s just a game, and one that really doesn’t matter.  Why are you acting like this?  Geez!”

And as the poofy clouds of self-awareness parted, I was taken back to a line all Gen Xers have etched into their memories.

“You, alright!  I learned it by watching you.”

And that’s when I started watching fewer and fewer Hoosier games.

I’ll watch alone, sometimes.  I never watch the late games before bed because I know I’ll never fall asleep mad (which doesn’t look good for IU’s 9:55 ET tip tomorrow night).  I usually follow the games on the ESPN app or Twitter, checking in on the score to see if it’s safe to watch for a bit.  And every once and a while, if I can manage to lower my expectations, I can sit through a game prepared at any time to say, “See, I knew this wasn’t going to go well.”  All while at the same time holding onto the slight glimmer of a 12-year-old’s optimism that we might just beat first-place Purdue at Mackey on a Saturday night on national TV. 

I was explaining all this to a colleague a couple weeks ago, also a Hoosier fan.  I think she thinks I’m nuts.  But as March Madness tips off today, I think I’m a better fan.  A more mature fan… sometimes.  A more emotionally stable and less violent fan… most of the time.  Certainly a less stressed-out fan.

I’ll always be for “Indiana, Our Indiana.”  It’ll just be at a safe distance from the arm of my couch.