Large sports events allways baffle me. I am more than capable of getting excited and involved in the outcome but can’t help but feel it is all for nothing. Cal is about to throw the ball, Stanford is desperately trying to get back into the game and as clynical as the photo seems now I was nothing if not a fan at that moment. We lost too, and it hurt.

There’s something about professional sports that seems fake and irrelevant. The score is a purely artificial zero-sum construct designed to generate a conflict in the game, and an emotion in the fans. I rarely watch and don’t have much in terms of emotional ties. I have a soft spot for my home town’s football team and a passing interest in Stanford sports, that’s about it.

The pursuit of a pointless victory does bring something with it, a performance. Great moments in sports have drama and beauty. Seeing Deco dispose of two or three defenders in a couple of fluid moves gives me the same thrill as hearing one of Bach’s seamless transitions between complex patterns. This is why the sadness at a Stanford loss is so irritating. The score is just a carrot to create the performance, it is irrelevant in the outcome. I should be sad the game had such inconsistent quality and happy about the drama of the finale.

See this photo (and more) in my flickr stream
(Written on 28 Apr 2010)