The one and only time I'm likely to talk about sports

I was watching basketball today.

I don't like it, but I get it. I understand that it's enjoyable to watch people who are really talented at something do it, and then to see them do it well.

I understand liking something, like a sport, not being any good at it yourself, then having that personal fault allow you to appreciate all that much more when people do it amazingly. I play the guitar, I am mediocre, I will never be considered a great guitar player. So when I see someone who can shred like their entire existence was built around doing that, it floors me.

But what I don't get, will never get, is team loyalty. Specifically college team loyalty.

I understand being into a specific aesthetic. I get it when you root for the home team because you feel it may represent you in some small way. But the kind of brand loyalty sports teams have garnered is almost incomprehensible to me. It overrides logic in most cases. To say you hate a team because of the coach? To say you hate a team because other people hate it? To be so connected to a team of people you don't know, have never met, are unlikely to meet, and then to know so little about those people other then their career stats? I mean I guess that's it, a lot of people are just obsessing over a stat machine.

Ask someone about their favorite sports team, then ask about the players they really like, then ask them what they know about that player. I really can't imagine too many people will be able to say anything more then stats. It seems the players themselves are really only there to get the numbers and as long as someone is getting the numbers then it doesn't matter who that person is.

This thought really occurred to me when I made the comment to my dad that the game, that was intensely close, was more enjoyable because of it. And he didn't agree. He wanted his team to be in the lead by an amount of points that made losing a marginal chance. And, look, I can get that it's very interesting to see a team be so good they just shut the other team down. But I honestly believe that a lot of sports fans would agree, they want their teams to always shut the opponents down. But how is that enjoyable? If you knew the outcome of the game would you still enjoy watching it? Isn't that the whole point of competition? That there is actually some competing going on?

I thought the game today was great. The outcome was decided by two points made in the last twenty seconds of the game. That to me is the absolute definition of competition. Two teams that played so closely together that the viewer literally had no idea how it was going to turn out.

What I'm really curious about I guess is: Is the win more important then how the competition went down?

I don't know a lot about sports, or the experience of being a major fan, so I'm not sure how valid any of my impressions are, but this is what I'm thinking about today. What do we like about competition, and why do we like it?