I Have Lost My Sports Hate

I hate the St. Louis Cardinals. I say that, because it is something that, as a Cubs fan, I have believed in my entire life. But, being honest with myself, I really don't hate the Cardinals. I'm 28 years old, and at this point in my life, I have to be pretty selective with my sports hatred.

I no longer hate the Cardinals, I'm just tired of them. I just want them to go away. I don't really care about the Tigers, but I'm kind of semi-rooting for them on the rare occasions that I accidentally turn on baseball. The Cubs suck, and fantasy baseball is over, so I have no reason to give two shits about the baseball season.

This is only partially because I am a much bigger college sports fan than I am of professional sports. As a fan of Iowa, I don't care at all about baseball, because Big Ten baseball is as relevant as the Jamaican hockey team. Even with the teams that do matter, I can't quite build up hatred for their opponents.

Iowa basketball has been bad for a while, so it's not like they can really create a rivalry. I think I probably hate Illinois basketball the most, but it certainly doesn't keep me up at night.

Iowa football matters, but I've gotten past the rage at how things are run to just kind of laugh when things get horribly fucked up. I was actually a Ken O'Keefe supporter. He did a solid job. He was conservative, but Kirk wants to run a conservative gameplan. People really hated the guy, but almost everyone just complained about a play call after it failed instead of having a viable solution. I also don't hate Kirk, because ten wins every few years is pretty cool. Maybe he'll never make it to the Rose Bowl, maybe he'll make it this year. He's still a really good coach, and yes, I realize he is overpaid, but I can't blame him for that. As for football rivalries, it really irritates me when Iowa loses to Northwestern, but it is just Northwestern. Wisconsin would be a rivalry, but Iowa no longer plays them every year, and I have had some great times in Madison, so it is tough to build up too much hatred. Maybe I could hate Nebraska, but the rivalry started one year ago, so I'm going to need some time to build up hate for them.

And then there's Iowa Wrestling, but hating another team in wrestling would be a real asshole move considering my favorite team always finishes in the top-5 nationally. I would say that I hate the fan bases of places like Penn State for having an awesome wrestling team and not giving a shit about it.

So, that's where I'm at. I no longer have that blind hatred of sports teams. I used to hate teams like the Packers and Cardinals. Now I'd still rather see them lose than win, but I don't have that chlamydia feeling burning inside of me anymore. Now it's more like a zit on my ballsack. Yeah, it's annoying, but it's pretty easy to make it go away.