Change Of Heart

[Note: This blog entry was written by GemParty]

You’re a punk! Fair weather fan! Front runner! Imagine these sports obscenities being chanted by a handful of seven year olds at a pool party. Imagine them being yelled towards the ultimate fan, a Boneyarder, for Christ’s sake. Me.

Somewhere between a game of bocce ball and my keg of beer, I declared, “Count me out for UConn men’s basketball season tickets this year”. That’s when the splashing in the pool began. Dads and uncles alike were goading the young fans to get on my case. Kids can be mean. They were.

In my first contributing article for the Boneyard Blog, I wanted to make myself vulnerable. Fans that love a sport often do. October to April, if you’re lucky, often two times a week can be a roller coaster of emotion. I’m ashamed to admit, a games outcome might even affect my mood for a day – or week. Friends from out of town who know me well don’t even bother calling for a minimum of seven days after a March Madness defeat. Those buddies get it.

I just decided enough is enough. Who can I blame for taking my post season away? How can I make a stand and voice my absolute hate for this penalty? How did we get here? I’m not the average fan. Folks that read the Boneyard weekly are the minority. I hurt deeply and quite frankly, as JC would say, I still do. I wondered, as an Italian, could I pull off a hunger strike? Considering I can’t live more than 24 hours without pasta, I doubted it. I would gather up the troops and make a call to action. Let’s picket outside ESPN, maybe get on Sport Center, proving Connecticut has passion and is being treated unfairly. The wife said she would kill me before I had the chance to get myself arrested. There was only one way, in my mind, to put my foot down. Unacceptable! I won’t renew my seat for the season. I will speak with my dollar. Whoever gets that money had some part in my loss and they won’t get a dime back. It hurt but I believed it gave me a small say in the matter.

The summer wore on, I attended my third Mohegan Sun Alumni Game in August and didn’t waver in my decision. Feeling that the season was going to be nothing more than a long scrimmage really bothered me. Having good memories of meeting Roscoe and Alex became distant. What was there to cheer about?

Enter Kevin Ollie, bearing an us-against-the-world mentality, urging his team to play for the love of the game and flashing his million dollar smile while giving us a memorable quote or two. Could he do or say enough to win over Warde Manuel, Susan Herbst, and the fans of Connecticut? Could he follow a Legend and turn a test drive into a long term contract? I had long believed he could and had already endorsed him for the position within my circle of fandom. I wanted to see it happen – an underdog shocking the world. I wanted to root for him.

I didn’t have a ticket.

Early in the opening game of the Armed Forces Classic in Germany, there was a steal and a breakaway and I yelled, startling my sleeping 5 month old baby. My wife stared me down and said softly, “I thought you didn’t care this year”. Truth is, part of me really didn’t want to. I figured I’d catch the majority of the games and just keep track of player development. I wrote a post on the Boneyard saying that I won’t even recognize this year’s champion, that there should be an asterisk by their name. It was a year put together by politics and fools.

It’s a lot to ask a forty-something guy with high cholesterol to go TenToesIn. I broke down and wandered the streets looking for a single ticket to a few games. I sat alone. I waved to my buddies, the ones that initiated the chants at the pool party. They laughed and remarked that that’s one crazy fan who wears his heart on his sleeve. I won’t lie; a few flipped me the bird.

This season began with a bitter taste in my mouth that has turned sweet thanks to an exciting season brought to us by one man and thanks to a team that believed in him, a team that’s passionate, loyal, and eager to win. This season reminds me of same the feelings of excitement I had back in the late 80’s. Those UConn teams grew to the point where they eventually won three National Championships. Now that I’m experiencing those same feelings again, I’ve had a change of heart. I’ve become a believer.

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