On the Sideline

Adam Gopnik has an article in the latest New Yorker about professional football called the Unbeautiful Game. I'd link to it, but I came up empty. Anyway, here's the last paragraph, which smacks of worldy wisdom...wisdom even a Bear fan could appreciate.

"The essential experience of watching sports is experiencing loss; anyone who has consoled a twelve year old after a Jets loss, or been a twelve year old in need of consolation, knows this. Since loss and disappointment are the only fixed points in life, maybe the best we can say is that pro football, like anything else we like to watch, gives us a chance to organize those emotions into a pattern, a season, while occasionally giving us the hope of something more. The Jets don't always lose - just nearly always. When they do better, we feel better. That's the margin, or sideline, on which we live."