So, I've become one of those people who talks a lot about sports. It's become one of my favorite conversation topics (quickly catching up to weather), and scarcely a day goes by without me checking espn.com.
How on earth did this happen? How did the little girl who has never participated in any kind of organized sports (not even soccer) and rolled her eyes whenever anyone watched sports on TV suddenly know about how all the teams in the Mountain West Conference?
I guess that's what college does to a person. That and marriage (though Kevin's not really a sports buff either, so I can't really blame him).
I think I've figured out what it is about sports that has me intrigued. Sure it's awesome that Jimmer can score from 40 feet away, but in all honesty, I don't even watch the games. (We don't even own a TV, which has probably improved our marriage substantially.) I just watch the scores. I've figured out that games are not isolated events, and that how one team does in a conference affects how the other teams do. When a team loses to a "bad" team, it hurts a lot more than when it loses to a "good" team. When the teams ahead of you lose, you'll probably go up. And . . . that's basically how sports works.
It's simple logic, and there's not really all that much math. But nevertheless it's intriguing to see how the dice will fall each week. Will Jimmer explode or will the Cougars have 30% shooting? Will Duke stay higher in the rankings despite their losses because they're more respected? What will the implications be if BYU gets a #3 seed instead of a #2 seed?
It's a mix of athletics, statistics, probability, politics, and economics that has me just interested enough to keep on watching. And clearly, it's got a lot of other people hooked too. Thank goodness we don't own a TV.
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