As an import from Maine, I make a lot of sacrifices living in Utah, especially regarding sports. Coming from New England, where Boston sports are the primary religion, to Utah where the primary religion is actually a religion, I feel like I’m being deprived of my spiritual rites/rights.
Baseball season officially begins this week, and the only people I know who actually care are fellow transplants from the outside world.
The Final Four is set in college basketball, and I’ve heard a few people talk about that, but I would be willing to bet that no more than five people who attend the U could name the teams that will face off in the Frozen Four. I would even go so far as to say that fewer than half the students here could tell me what the Frozen Four is.
Speaking of hockey, the NHL regular season ends this weekend, and what many sports fans consider to be the most exciting event of the year, the NHL playoffs, begin next week. The problem is, I know more people in Utah who openly hate the sport of hockey (2), than like it (1). The remaining Utahns I know are indifferent.
But what I find most disappointing is the fact that the Jazz are in the midst of a heated playoff race, and I know a total of three Utahns who are following the frenzy. That’s even after an amazing last-second victory over Denver, a team that is now one game behind the Jazz in the standings. Hey, at least Utahns aren’t a bunch of bandwagon jumpers.
In fact, most Utahns have two feet firmly planted on the sobriety wagon, which I feel contributes significantly to their lack of spectator enthusiasm. Gambling, or a lack thereof, might also spawn Utah’s apathy toward spectator sports.
If you don’t believe me, try watching a baseball game without drinking and/or without betting on it. All that time between pitches and innings really adds up, usually to about four or five beers, conservatively. Then there are the pitching changes, the conferences on the mound, and the seventh inning stretch. What are you supposed to do then?
You either drink away the downtime, worry about the money you gambled or drink away the worry about the money you gambled. Some people (Red Sox fans) actually have enough emotion invested in their team so they don’t have to drink or gamble. Instead, they just pray to the baseball gods and drink out of mere habit.
There are exceptions to this rule, even in Utah, but drinking and watching baseball is essentially a match made in heaven.
Hockey is another game that, for some reason, goes hand in hand with a drink and a wager. Maybe it’s because you have to be drunk to think like a hockey player, or because the violence isn’t as fun when you’re sober, but either way, hockey is a drunk man’s game.
As for gambling, no honest man can say that the NCAA basketball tournament is more fun to watch with nothing on the line. The truth is that the tournament is only as big as it is because anyone with a few bucks and a pen can fill out a bracket and win between $50 and $1,000, depending on the size of the pool. Without gambling, the NCAA basketball championship would only be slightly bigger than the NCAA hockey championships, which, incidentally, are twice as exciting.
So because of piety, I am forced to worship alone, or at least apart from the massive throngs of people I normally worship with back east. I go to bars, sports pubs (there’s a legal difference), and other places of various reputation so that I may observe, while others ignore.
Basically, it’s a problem of religion getting in the way of what’s important. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints forbids drinking, and as one of my LDS colleagues put it, “if you make money gambling, you don’t pay tithing on it.”
Where’s the fun in that?
If you don’t think religion has taken the fun out of watching sports, just listen to what the pope said in his latest edict.
“When Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes subordinate to… entertainment and sport, people stay locked within a horizon so narrow they can no longer see the heavens,” he said.
Not you too, J.P.
So this Sunday, when the Red Sox open their regular season against the Orioles and everyone else is locked in righteous observances of their own, I’ll be ignoring the proclamation of his eminence and sitting down on that really comfortable couch in front of that really big TV at Fiddler’s Elbow, taking in the first of 162 religious rites-and that’s only one sport.
With only 52 Sundays per year, and maybe 10 or 15 auxiliary pseudo-sabbaths, I’m already three times more religious than the average religious person, and I get to drink and gamble.
Sounds like it’s time for you Utahns to re-evaluate your priorities.