JONES: Sports apathy at CU helps fun factor

Today, for the first time since before anyone can probably remember, I’m not going to talk about football.

Wipe those tears away, though, because your world is not crumbling down around you as much as you may think. I’m merely taking a brief sabbatical from talking about our boys on the gridiron to talking about a different type of “football”—soccer.

Now, as I’m sure is clear, the men’s soccer team is not really my jam. I “know” an entire three kids on the team. And I’m using the verb “know” really loosely here. Like really, really loosely.
But, since Spec Sports has a much closer connection than I do—shout-out to my fellow columnists Zach and Ronnie—a whole handful of us went to this past Saturday’s game against Harvard together.

Granted, I was already up at Baker for the football game (yes, it did take me only 100 words to get back to football), so I only had to walk a few steps to get to the soccer field. Therefore, I won’t pretend that this was some giant effort made on my part, but I packed a Columbia blue T-shirt in my bag and headed on over.

What I learned from Saturday’s game, coupled with my experiences at other random sporting events throughout the years, is that you don’t really have to be a devoted follower of a Columbia sports team to really enjoy a game.

Every team here has its groupies. It’s surprising to hear that, I know, but it is true. There are guys who wear body paint to football games, baseball always has the same gaggle of girls in the stands, and the basketball team actually gets a semi-decent crowd sometimes (relative to, say, fencing).

Then again, tally up the number of people who go to contests for any team at all, and it’s going to be a terribly small percentage of the student body here. It’s a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless, that there aren’t usually people unconnected to the teams showing up at games out of sheer enjoyment of sports.

Thus, I must admit that I thought it might be a little intimidating to go to a game where I would be entirely lost. When I first got there, the only kid on the field I recognized was Columbia’s goalkeeper, Alex Auricchio—and that’s only because I covered the baseball team for a whole season. I kinda felt like a fraud.

But then I spotted Zach from across the field, so that doubled the people I knew. And then someone else pointed out Ronnie—our other Spec Sports connection—and that brought my total up to three. Finally I spotted a kid I only knew for the first two weeks of freshman year (shout out to my roommate) and that made four. Three out of those four are the weakest connections ever, but roll with it.

As it turned out though, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have much of a connection to the team or that I’m not an obsessed soccer fan. It was simply a fun atmosphere.

The game was intense and exciting, as there was the extra level of the team needing to win to keep hope alive for winning the league title, but I don’t think that’s the only reason it was fun. As long as you’re there with a few people you know, you’re not alone. And it’s a sports match, so there’s always action to watch and things to get excited about.

A simple program at the entrance can give you the names of players you don’t know. And there’s always the common enemy of whatever lesser Ivy League foe has come around this time. So there’s automatically someone to root for and a common goal in mind.

So, added to the fact that I’ve been to baseball games, a couple swim meets, and even a rugby game which I walked into knowing not a single rule, I basically just can’t ignore the fact that Columbia sporting events are just plain fun. And honestly, this probably has to do with the fact that we’re a school that doesn’t care, as opposed to a school that does, because unless you’re going to be a die-hard fan, sporting events at intense schools are probably only fun because of all the tailgating that goes on beforehand.

Here, however, while there’s no tailgating or intense sports culture, there’s no pressure to actually know what’s going on either. I’ve been in the stands at some contests and explained the rules of the game, and people have explained rules to me at other times. Either way, I’m still there cheering.

I can only imagine that if you’re at a school where all anyone cares about is sports, you’d get a lot of attitude for asking about simple rules of a major sport.

I guess this means that, for once, I’m willing to say that Columbia’s apathetic attitude has actually made sporting events better for me. Why not try something new and get lost in the intensity of a sport I’ve never watched before? Why not go to the second-to-last men’s soccer game of my undergraduate years and cheer like a longtime groupie? Might as well. I have a hell of a good time, and no one else is there to call my bluff.

Victoria Jones is a Barnard College senior majoring in French.