In the 2012 London Olympics, a judoka from my hometown of Middletown named Kayla Harrison was fighting for the chance to become the first American, man or woman, to win a gold medal. Her opponent was a Brit named Gemma Gibbons, who had had a remarkable run to the finals and was the darling of the local media and fans. I had watched a total of something like one or two judo matches in my life up to that point, but in that moment - sitting in my pajamas at my desk, streaming the match live through a ratty laptop on its last legs - I was completely transfixed on the outcome of that event.
Kayla won, by the way.
It was super awesome (and not particularly close), not just because damn, someone from my hometown won a gold medal, but also because of all the trials and hardship that she had to go through to reach that goal. For the hour or so of my life that following Kayla Harrison's Olympic journey consumed, it was the most important and exciting sporting event that I had ever followed in my life. And when she did it all over again in 2016, capturing her second gold medal, I was right there to watch it unfold in front of me.
All of that makes for a nice story, but if I'm being honest with myself all I've really done here is given you a two paragraph definition of "bandwagon fan." Because in the four years between 2012 and 2016, my dedication to both judo and the career of Kayla Harrison basically entailed me following her Twitter account and watching that YouTube video of her kicking the snot out of Gemma Gibbons about fifty times. There are no Kayla Harrison shirts in my closet, no Kayla Harrison bobbleheads on my shelf, I don't regale my friends with tales of Kayla Harrison's greatest ippons, and I don't have her face tattooed on my back.
For a lot of people, that makes me a Bad Fan. For them, you need to devote every waking hour of your life to the idea that Your Team is both infallible and omnipresent, and anything less is a betrayal of the fan's code. Witness millions of people getting genuinely excited and appreciative of the prospect of another Cleveland Browns football season, only to swear them off forever five months later before returning back, hat in hand, right before the NFL Draft and begging to be let back in the club.
It's insane and self-destructive, and I think there's a passage in Proverbs about that. We tell ourselves that if the team we like happens to be good, locking ourselves into a particular fandom from birth-ish is all the more sweet when our blind devotion eventually pays off; plus, it gives us a sense of moral superiority to the Drakes of the world who'll put on any jersey as long as we get to hang out in the locker room after the game.
Well, as it turns out, winning is way cooler than not winning. It's easy to think otherwise if your sports equivalent of a busted Roth IRA that's losing year in and year out is what you hang on to for several months out of the year, but it's true. Winning is cool and good, and sometimes you have to put loyalty aside to find it.
I can feel your skepticism. I know that any longtime sports fan is going to be suspicious of anyone who is encouraging you to hop around fandoms. You point to your Reds hat that you've had since you were six and tell me that you'll never, ever betray that kind of loyalty. My response to that is that I also have a Reds hat, which I wore in the rain for three hours at a game in Cincinnati a few weeks ago, watching helplessly as the Reds blew a three run lead in the 9th inning and went on to lose in extras. Just saying.
But I do understand the necessity of meeting people halfway.
All of the above is a very long winded way of saying that you should go check out some men's volleyball tomorrow night at St. John Arena.
And truthfully, I know pretty much nothing about men's volleyball. I know how you score points and I know that you can't hit the ball too many times on your own side, but literally any other rule or intricacy it completely lost on me. I do know one other thing about Ohio State men's volleyball, however, which is that they are very, very good and have a good chance of winning another national championship.
Which is good enough for me, dammit! And should be good enough for you: if you're on Eleven Warriors, you're either here to follow the saga of DJ's cat or you have some kind of implicit connection to Ohio State and generally want them to succeed (or both). If it's the latter you should be as hyped for a volleyball natty as any other opportunity to rub the pulpy rind of victory in the face of your enemies.
What I recommend is that you spend the next day and a half just absolutely bandwagoning the shit out of the men's volleyball team. Memorize player names ("Uh yeah, my favorite player is Nick Szerezsenerenen... en"), try to figure out the names of the various positions (believe it or not, it's not just "back," "front," and "server"), and construct an elaborate lie in which you attended a little-seen match between the Buckeyes and Bethune-Cookman (it doesn't matter if that match actually happened or not as long as the people who weren't there give you credit for going).
Hollow? Sure. Disingenuous? Kind of. But in the end, it's a win/win situation for everyone. The men's volleyball gets to play before a large, excited crowd in a classic arena that's not long for this world, and you get to see an Ohio State team possibly capture a second consecutive national championship right before your eyes. So buy the tickets!
Everyone's love of a sport has to start somewhere, and that start doesn't always have to be in the crib. As we get older, we should still encourage ourselves to try on as many hats as we can, because who knows? Maybe that one event is what transforms something from a curiosity into a passion. All sports, teams, and athletes deserve at least the chance to prove themselves to you, and we're lucky that Ohio State can continue to provide that.
The Ohio State men's volleyball team played in front of less than 5000 people yesterday. They deserve at least double that tomorrow night, and all the better if this is your first time seeing them in person. They'll be happy to have you, and the fun starts at 7.
How firm thy friendship pic.twitter.com/A6tiC1UGe4
— OSU Men's Volleyball (@OhioState_MVB) May 5, 2017
