I was reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Sports Section on Wednesday when I stumbled across Ron Cook's article, Hits and Hypocrisy. In it, he argues that "It's hard to say who are bigger hypocrites, hockey people or hockey fans [...]. When one of yours takes out one of theirs with a hit ranging from borderline dirty to flagrantly criminal, it's a good, clean, hard hockey play. But when one of theirs puts the same hit on one of yours, the perp is a rotten lowlife who should be fined, suspended and maybe even banned for life from the NHL."
It is perfectly true that fans do this. We boo when our team is penalized for a completely illegal hit, and we cheer like mad when their team is sent to the penalty box for something we got away with just a minute earlier. But that's the point of being a fan. Your team are the good guys, theirs are the bad guys, simply because your team is from the same place as you. Or they have prettier uniforms. Or they're just cooler in general, because you say so.
We all know that the punch our favorite defenseman threw was a cheap shot. If we think about it, we all see the hypocrisy of it. But the point of hockey is not to think; it's to enjoy the sport (and the occasional bloodbath that comes with the game). If you want to get technical, it's hypocritical to cheer when any team in any sport scores, and boo when another one does. But that's the difference between fans and impartial observers.
I think Verizon's 2008 commercial sums it up pretty well:
No comments:
Post a Comment