The Great Debate: My love letter to sports

Over spring break, I got into a nearly two-and-a-half-hour debate with one of my close friends about sports. Not about if LeBron James or Michael Jordan is the GOAT or if Braxton Berrios and Mike White leaving the Jets signifies the end of a dynasty (which it definitely does). My friend was arguing that sports are pointless, and it doesn’t make sense why so many people care about them so much.

Now, as someone striving to work in sports journalism and the literal sports editor at the Daily Trojan, I admittedly got a little defensive about the topic. But looking back now, my friend did have a lot of good and fair points.

From the outside looking in, sports can be repetitive. At its core, sports are just watching a player shoot a ball at a net repeatedly until one team “wins.” The winning side celebrates while the losing side cries. And then it happens again and again, year after year and championship after championship. 

It’s just a constant cycle of winning and losing with no change in between, and yet it’s all people can talk about. These were the main points my friend was making, and even though at the time I was arguing back, I still saw the validity in what they were saying. 

After thinking about it for a while, my friend is right about sports to some extent. But the reason I and so many others find joy and passion in it is because of the intricacies that make each game so unique. I know it’s corny but watching sports is like watching poetry in motion.

The storylines and parodies of each game leave me and sports fans alike craving more and more. Looking at the game from different angles and focusing on what makes each little moment different from the next makes sports exciting every time. 

It’s the instant unifier and is part of why I love sports. I could go up to anyone who loves sports and just say the names Corey Brewer, Jonas Gray or Hatem Ben Arfa, and a smile will instantly follow. Names that mean absolutely nothing to some people represent a story to others.

Even when people aren’t the biggest sports fans, typically, if they find some reason to care about a given game, they tend to get engulfed in the sport like myself. Just last week, I was texting my grandma about the Elite Eight game that was going on between the University of Miami and the University of Texas at Austin.

Before the game, there is no chance my grandma could have named a single player that has played for either school in the last 30 years, let alone currently. But because the schools that were playing were where she met and fell in love with my grandpa (Miami) and then where they moved after and attended grad school together (Texas), she had some skin in the game.

She was rooting for Texas, and when the game finished I got a text saying, “Turning it off. It’s too painful to watch.” She watched intensely because she had a reason to root for a team. The passion, the fire, the sitting on the edge of your seat waiting to see how the final seconds of a game will turn out is what draws me back every time.

I’ll always watch, no matter the game. Even if it’s a game between the Spurs and the Trailblazers — which could be an absolute snooze-fest between two bottom clubs in the NBA — I’ll still want to tune in because then I’d get a chance to see Romeo Langford play, who I’ve been following since he’s been in high school.

Myself and other fans develop an affinity for these “random” players and want to see them succeed. It’s like discovering an up-and-coming musician and following their career path, hoping they make it big so everyone will understand why you like them. I’ll go to bat any day for Quincy Enunwa, Nassir Little or Derek Stepan and defend them with my life because I care that much.

I’m going to continue to love sports and follow them at all hours of the day and hopefully even pursue a career in it one day. Maybe sports are stupid and just repetitive, and my life wouldn’t be that different without them. But I don’t really care if that’s true or not because I see the beauty in them and will always continue to.

Stefano Fendrich is a sophomore writing about his opinions on some of sport’s biggest debates in his column, “The Great Debate,” which runs every other Tuesday. He is also a sports editor at the Daily Trojan.