Will this loss hurt UConn? That's unlikely. It will give Huskies fans sometehing different to full-bore obsess over.
Since when did we full-bore obsess?
We just have some core beliefs, such as that UConn should always win -- always -- and we might discuss at some length -- OK, at extraordinary length -- how long all this winning may go on.
In the view of some of our more optimistic members, the Huskies' ability to keep winning all the time may stretch for hundreds of games. The more reasonable among us think it'll go on merely indefinitely, with no numbers attached.
So all of this fixation on continued victories may create a false impression we're just obsessed with winning. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We're also fixated on losses -- not only on how they'll be put off for a long time by all the winning but especially, on those rare occasions that they occur, why it happened.
A loss has varied elements that are endlessly fascinating, at least to us, as befits a debate akin to one over why the sun one fine morning suddenly rose in the west.
When you have to marshal explanations why this happened when it couldn't happen, and then you have to hold forth on how you saw it coming despite your endless prior obsessing over how it wouldn't likely happen -- well, hoo boy, convolution reigns.
Now add in that your theories and reasons for what the sun did will differ from others' reasons, and a third group will be mad at all of you critics for being silly when everything's fine and the sun is warm no matter where it rises from, and you have the makings of wonderful conflict within an overall obsessive format.
I know, you're thinking all this makes Ms. Voepel's case -- that a loss gives us
"something different to full-bore obsess over."
But I beg to differ. Our obsessing is never fully boring.
Just remember, Ms. Voepel, obsessive can be a synonym for fanatical. And fanatics can be shortened to fans.
Yes, we're crazy obsessives wallowing in obsessive discussions of winning and not losing and why our team does and doesn't and won't unless it does and why.
But that doesn't add up to fully boring. To the contrary, crazy is rarely boring, at least to connoisseurs of it.
And that's us fans.
But, it's late, and I'll sign off with the thought that if the sun comes up tomorrow in the same weird place it did this morning, somebody better post a good explanation here. With which I may disagree.
