Sundays are changing here at Loyola. The NFL has made its claim and now students can be seen wearing their favorite team's logo over their adrenaline-circulating hearts on game day, cocky with the confidence that their hometown boys are the best on the gridiron. As the box scores align like planets, something supernatural happens. The sleeping spirit of raw competition awakens in the hearts of dormant fans, especially those hailing from four-sport cities.
This is the same spirit that possesses hockey dads to bare-knuckle box each other in the stands over their sons' honor and plagues stadium security guards forced to wrangle truculent fans. Most of us just accept it as an inevitability of "the game" without the realization that we are not under the control of our own devices.
At Loyola, the spirit of competition manifests itself in a much milder form. When encouraged by a six pack and some Popov, this spirit can result in a terminal case of beer muscles. Admittedly, incidents are fairly isolated, but that does not mean there is no pent up aggression pulsing to express itself on the face of a division rival.
As a dedicated Red Sox fan (trust me, we're not all bandwagoners), I know the way a Yankee logo on a passing student's chest can inspire a tirade of self-righteous curse words that could make a construction worker shift uncomfortably. Truth be told, I'm ready to full-on Urlacher any offender, even if she's a 95-pound ballerina in a pink Rodriguez fashion jersey. With the onset of the NFL season, the wealth of Giants and Jets jerseys on campus is enough to quicken my pulse - but I contain myself.
I do so not only because my max on the bench press is infantile (Paulie Shore and I would make great workout partners), but because the spirit of rationality usually kicks in before I charge. It's a survival instinct.
What's the root of this aggression? From an objective standpoint it seems to be an arbitrary tool of judgment - one steeped in pride. The god Testosterone is the number one catalyst in this phenomenon as men are more likely to let their fists negotiate an opponent's affiliation. This does not exclude women, however - I've had more than one woman accost me for my John Lester jersey. We're all animals. The dilemma is age-old. Men have been letting their groins do the thinking since saber-toothed tiger fur was considered good fashion. Here at Loyola, we're a forced into close quarters with the enemy: the Phillies faithful are forced into classrooms with Mets fans and even the staunchest Devils fans still have to bear the occasional Rangers hat on the footbridge midday. Survival becomes focused less on domination and more on coexistence. Step one to overcoming the boundaries of allegiance is realizing that your team is not, in fact, the best. There are times when letting the inner animal break out is appropriate, but the Quad isn't Madison Square Garden, so we must learn to mediate those spirits that surge from below.
Keep your allegiances though. Take pride in your boys for their successes and failures, but do so with caution - this ain't home, Dorothy. Be prepared for someone to contest you, but do your best to keep those spirits at bay. Let the scoreboard do the talking.
Be the first to comment on this article!