| The Art of Watching Sports
By Patryk Fournier March 8th, 2004 |
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I bought the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm on DVD last week and watching one of the episodes inspired me to write this commentary. In the "Bracelet" episode Larry was watching football when his wife Cheryl arrived home from her 4-day trip in Florida. Here's where the problem began for Larry. There was 2 minutes left in the 4th quarter and his wife arrives home at the worst possible time. Of course being away for a few days she was eager to talk to her husband and here's the rub: Larry was forced to do the half-listen: balancing the conversation with his wife and listening to the game. Of course it didn't work for him and the situation left Cheryl furious with him. It's a situation that as guys we've all been in; trying to manage the delicate balance between keeping a happy relationship going with women and still catching the ending to the big game that you'll know everyone will be talking about the next day. Some girlfriends and wives have a tough time understanding the vital role that sports holds in every man's life. I'm not sure if it's a poor sense of timing…or just a really good sense of timing, depending on how you look at it. Regardless, I'm positive that women have built-in "crucial moment sensors" for sports. It could be the 12th round of a boxing match, a penalty shot in hockey, a Randy Johnson-Barry Bonds at bat, the last minute of an NCAA basketball game, or a Hail Mary pass and somehow a women will know the exact moment to enter the room and ask a question or explain how rude a salesperson was at the store. After enough sports watching we all know that you can't take the displayed sports time left in a game at face value because of factors like timeouts, commercial breaks and general stoppages in play. This used to be a little known fact reserved to a sports watching crowd but the secret is out now with constant score and time overlays that all networks use during their broadcasts of the game and now women have grown wise to the sports-time exchange rate.
1 minute left in basketball = 10-12 minutes Of course this kinda levels the playing field between men and women because for years men have been wise to the woman-time exchange rate:
I have to fix my hair = 20-30 minutes
When it comes to sports watching guys need to be smart about it. You have to guard against the boy who cried wolf scenario. You have to pick and choose your battles wisely. It's a much smarter tradeoff of forgoing a regular season game because you'll need to save those crucial moments for watching sports during the playoffs, although recent advances in TV may save the need to pick your battles altogether. Relationships may be saved with the recent technological advantages of digital video recording (DVR) offered by Bell ExpressVU, Rogers and TiVo (in the US). You are able to pause and rewind live TV. I can pretty much guarantee you that the technology to pause live TV was created by a guy sick of ruining relationships with his excessive sports watching. Once and a while excuses like "I've invested so much time into this game that if I miss the last 3 minutes of play it feels like the last 3 hours were a waste" will not get you anywhere and to ease the tension a gift is needed. That's why the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode was entitled "Bracelet" because that's the gift Larry needed to get Cheryl to smooth things over. Flowers will usually do the trick and so I found myself at a flower shop last week and the person at the store suggested I buy some nice un-bloomed flowers: "They'll be bloomed in 3-5 days and absolutely gorgeous." If I'm buying un-bloomed flowers I might as well buy a bag of seeds. Okay, do flower shops have any idea of why guys buy flowers? There are only three reasons why you'll ever see a guy in a flower shop: Someone is sick/passes away, a special event or holiday, or finally because the guy screwed up and needs to apologize. In any of these situations buying un-bloomed flowers will not work. So next time you're watching sports think about your fellow man and remember that somewhere, some place, some guy is in a delicate situation trying to keep his girlfriend/wife happy while trying to watch the end of the game. |
Let me know what you thought about this commentary.