What Do Sports Mean To Me?

In October 2005, the Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros met in Game Four of the National League Division Series. The Astros were up two-game-to-one in the best-of-five so the Braves needed a victory to force a fifth game and one more game in Atlanta. They failed to secure a lead and headed to extra innings; nine of them, to be exact. My heart felt like it could not handle it as the Braves failed to take advantage of runners they had been able to get on base. Ultimately, they lost on a Chris Burke 18th inning homerun, ending their season.

Flash back to February of 2002 and the greatest basketball game I have ever watched. Notre Dame headed to Georgetown for a Big East battle. What they got was a marathon quadruple overtime game that, at least at the time, was the highest scoring and longest game in Big East history before finally, the Irish pulled away when Matt Carroll scored seven of his 30 points in the final period as the Irish won 116-111.

Same school, different sport, and flashing back to a game more recently. In late September of 2006, the Fighting Irish headed to Spartan Stadium for a football game with Michigan State. What they got was a sure upset turned into an improbable comeback. The Irish, coming off a weak effort to Michigan, were looking to bounce back and look like national contenders again. Instead, they were down 17 at halftime and 16 at the end of the third quarter. What transpired in that fourth quarter was incredible. The Irish scored 19 in the final quarter, including the game-winning TD by cornerback Terrail Lambert's return off an interception. I was not capable of screaming out loud because I was the only one in the house awake, but I was definitely screaming out inside.

Why do I mention these things? Because two of those events are some of the happiest moments of my life and the other is one of the saddest. Add another sad event as the Dallas Cowboys lost to the Seattle Seahawks minutes ago on a mishandled snap on what would have been a chip shot field goal that would have put the Cowboys up with a minute or so remaining and a visit to the second round of the playoffs.

It was an easy play, done flawlessly a million times. Snap the ball, QB Tony Romo grabs the ball, puts it down, keeps it steady by holding the top of the ball with the tips of his fingers, and bam, the kicker pounds it through.

It was the last gasp of life by a Dallas Cowboys team full of more controversy than performance.

Right before the play, I stood in my living room (I could not sit at this moment) holding my shirt over my nose, almost afraid to watch. I would like to say I saw the events coming so that I sound smarter, but you can not see this happening. I was afraid Martin Grammatica, the kicker, would shank it. Or maybe the snap would be bad. Maybe the Seahawks would bring pressure up the middle and block it. Maybe the Cowboys hold and there is a 10 yard penalty. Maybe...

But it was the easiest part. Romo just had the ball slip out of his hands. He clamored to his feet and tried to run it in, but was stopped at the one and a half. Much like Jason Witten, who was stopped on the previous play setting up the fourth and inches and the need to kick a field goal.

I write this because I truly feel I failed or had been presented bad news on my personal life. Is it natural for sports to feel this way? Hell no. Sports shouldn't feel this way. I have no impact on it, but God help me, I am as depressed now as I was when I stopped seeing my last girlfriend. Sports are an escape from reality. After 9/11, it was sports that made me realize things could be okay again. It was Mike Piazza killing my team that gave New York hope. Sports give and give and ask so very little.

It's an addiction. I can't get enough of it.

And now, I wish I had never watched. I wish I could just remove ESPN and the like from my world.

But I won't. I'll be wondering who the Cowboys can get in the upcoming off season before you know it. For the moment, though, I hate football with a passion.

Sorry...

I do this thing where I made a site...and soon after, don't update for awhile if ever again.

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I know it's not very political, but Barry Bonds admits to using sterioids. But...he didn't know they were steroids. He just applied cream and injested stuff cause his trainer told him to do it. This is absolutely retarded. When you're at a party, you're not supposed to take drinks people just hand to you. When you do and you get drugged, you're retarded for not knowing where the drink came from. Likewise, in Bonds's case, you should know what you're taking, especially when you have denied steroid use because you have a newfound care for your body and that's what has made you a better player.

In all honesty, I doubt very seriously he DIDN'T know they were steroids. And he should get the book thrown at him.

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Did you know that Congo and Rwanda might be fighting right now? Well, it's true. But here's the reason. Rwanda is hunting down Hutu rebels, the ones who took part in the genocide in 1994.

I mention this because I come off as a huge Clinton supporter. And...I am. If they would change the Constitution to let him run again, I would vote for him in a heartbeat. In fact, I agree with Bill Maher that if we pass an amendment to allow foreigners to run for President (currently being discussed with 20 years as a US citizen being needed to run), we should also pass an amendment to repeal the 22nd Amendment, which put the term limit at two.

But...one of the things I have been strongly critical of Clinton of is his handling of Rwanda. Even Clinton himself, during a 12 day tour through Africa in 1998, made a point to admit the pass wrongs that the US has been part of. "It is well not to dwell too much on the past, but I think it is worth pointing out that the United States has not always done the right thing by Africa." Indeed, President. He also spoke against the Cold War strategy of supporting anti-Soviet dictatorships.

His failure to act militarily in Rwanda to stop the mass genocide is one thing I can never look past, though. Genocide is an act of madness and should always be fought against, no matter who is President. Hence why I grow more and more angry with the Bush administration as Sudan continues down that road.

In my Marx class, we talked about Hitler and Stalin from time-to-time, especially the latter. Stalin's killing was, with the exception of the Republic of Georgia, more his own paranoia and his desire to squash even minimal dissent. Hitler's killing of the Jews is a little different. And FDR and Churchill and so forth could be considered failures for how long it took to get to the concentration camps.

How can we still not learn from all of this senseless killing?

By the way, if Rwanda soldiers have crossed the border into Congo afte these rebels, Congo has declared that to be an act of war.

Africa...blowing up as we speak. Sally Struthers isn't going to be able to do much here.

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Speaking of Clinton problems and Africa, Somalia remains one of the saddest places in the world. Remember Black Hawk Down? Yeah, good movie. Josh Hartnett and Orlando Bloom and all those other guys who make the front cover of some teen magazine...yeah, that was actually a real story. But, really, forgotten because it's not that interesting is we pulled out of Somalia soon after. Clinton bowed to Washington pressure and pulled out the soldiers. The same Republicans strongly in support of going into Iraq were questioning why we were in Somalia. Hmm....funny.

Well, anyway, Somalia is still a pretty fucked up place if you haven't been watching the news. Actually, had you been watching the news, you wouldn't know either. At cnn.com, the story is not front page material. Fox News can't even find Somalia on the map. And MSNBC is too busy not wanting to appear too liberal or too conservative.

But people are still dying, either by starvation or violence. The U.N. JUST went in there on a high-level visit. The last ten years, there have been zero high-level visits. Because of Sudan, it appears Somalia is ignored. Somaliland, an unrecognized country, houses 500,000 refugees, mostly in small huts with little resources. The President of Somaliland complains about being forgotten by the world.

He has a point. I'm sure some people saw Black Hawk Down and spent a few hours googling history on the event. But it's 2004...almost 2005. There are quite a few other things to question here.

Somalia itself has a new government, but the people of Somaliland do not support it and will not join with the country its refugees have come from.

Seriously, any help in Africa...would be nice. But what can I expect from an administration that, in one of their first acts, declared that birth control and condoms would not go to African countries that legalized abortions. They have since went against that. I guess that's a good flip flop.

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We are spending $100 million more on abstinence programs than we did before. That's actually a $100 million less than Bush wanted. But...why? What does abstinence training really get us? Telling teenagers not to have sex is about as useless as me telling a Christian evolution is more sensible. It's pretty hilarious...Wade Horn, assistant secretary of HHS, said...and I most definitely quote..."We don't need a study, if I remember my biology correctly, to show us that those people who are sexually abstinent have a zero chance of becoming pregnant or getting someone pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease." Ya know what...on the STD part, he's wrong. You don't need to be having sex to get a STD. That's pretty sad that he doesn't know that.

Even more pressing is...uh...pregnancy rates have beend declining. On the flipside, STD rates among young people 15-24 is about half of all new STDs in the US. What does this mean?

Does it, as Horn suggest, mean we need more money to teach kids that are having sex that they shouldn't have sex?

If you believe this, you really don't have much of a grasp of reality.

Or does it mean we need to teach them that simply having a condom won't excuse them from disease. It helps. It's needed. No doubt. But condoms can only prevent so much. Oral sex, for example, has consequences. It's possible to contract an STD and still be a virgin. Not a lot of people are aware of the consequences. After hep and AIDS, all the other STD's are forgotten for most people. So teaching them how to prevent all STD's might be a better idea than the outdated belief that if you don't talk about it or know about it, they aren't having sex. We had a thing in the 60's called a Sexual Revolution. You can't go backwards. Just not going to work.

Horn says abstinence education is "something that parents and children want." Besides the fact that it's arguible if he's right, his use of the word "children" gets at a problem. The "children" aren't the ones you have to worry about. It's the young adults, suddenly getting used to their new bodies and ready to explore...they are the ones you gotta worry about. And pretending they won't be getting down is just not logical. We're a society that watches Sex and the City and Real World, while listening to music that at times might make Madonna blush. Am I really supposed to believe abstinence-only programs will be helpful?

I don't oppose saying the most protective way to avoid disease and pregnancy is to be abstinent. But to believe that teaching that as the main focus of sexual education...well, it screams of stupidity. And if there's one thing I'm not used to hearing from the Bush administration is something stupid.