[Football insert] Meaning of sports exceeds mere definition

What is sports?

To be sure it is a broad question, easily answered by going to a
dictionary, but Merriam-Webster doesn’t have the answer
I’m looking for.

No matter ““ I believe it goes beyond a simple bland
objective definition because sports cannot be objectified. And on
this, the greatest sports week of the UCLA sports calendar, in the
greatest crosstown college football rivalry, we’ll look at
why we would put ourselves through so much torture, given
USC’s recent dominance and UCLA’s 22.5-point underdog
status.

Sports is emotion.

You might be angry, sad, happy or bitter. You could be any
number of things because those are the emotions brought out by
facing a team like USC, top-ranked, haughty and with good reason
for its arrogance: they’re just that damn good.

They’re like all the enemies in any semi-good sports
movie. These are the guys who told Rudy he was too small, or the
Yankees in anything. USC plays this kind of villain role perfectly.
It even has the most evil villain of all in head coach Pete
Carroll, who faked a punt when leading 34-10 late in last
Saturday’s game against Notre Dame. He must have been afraid
that if the Irish got the ball back, they might score four
touchdowns while converting three consecutive onside kicks and win
the game.

Sports is inspiration.

The story of fullback Michael Pitre isn’t too
well-documented. Maybe it’s because his job requires him to
just clear the pathway for UCLA’s excellent running back trio
of Manny White, Maurice Drew and Chris Markey.

But Pitre has gone through a lifetime of heartaches. His mother
passed away from cancer just a couple months after he signed with
UCLA, never getting to see him in a Bruin uniform. He had to
redshirt his freshman year with a neck injury. Nobody would have
blamed Pitre if he rode off into the sunset.

But there Pitre was playing against Oklahoma State in this
year’s season opener, setting the tone for one of the
nation’s top rushing attacks. And there Pitre will be against
USC, paving the way and bulldozing a path for his running backs,
overcoming odds most of us cannot even fathom.

Sports is vicarious.

There are very few of us blessed enough to have the talent to
play Division I football. From afar, it’s easy to imagine
ourselves behind the helm of a UCLA offense, down by six with one
minute to go, and driving the length of the field for the
game-winning score against top-ranked USC.

Heck, I’ve done it six times this week on my Xbox, pulling
Drew Olson in favor of me, a 7-foot, 250-pound quarterback with a
99 on speed, strength, throwing accuracy, etc., etc. Vicarious
indeed.

Sports is love.

How else do you explain why the football team puts itself
through what they’ve gone through? It’s easy to
criticize. I’ve done it many times. But how many of us would
get up at 5 a.m. every morning before class to work out for two
hours voluntarily? And this is during the offseason.

It’s what makes this year’s version, Dorrell XP,
different than last year’s version, which was the equivalent
of DOS, or “dosing off sleeping.” When everyone thought
they were down earlier this year, they shut out Stanford. When
people ostracized them for a loss to Washington State and
discounted them from even being bowl-eligible, they came back with
an upset win over Oregon. This is where those early morning
workouts pay off.

Sports is hope.

The setting is perfect. To be sure, besides the players and
coaches themselves, no one expects UCLA to win. But nobody expected
Rudy to make it either. Nor did anyone believe Herman Boone was the
right man for the job when he took a racially divided TC Williams
High School football team to the championship in “Remember
the Titans.” It’s the American way, the old
rags-to-riches story, that on any given day, even against the
Goliaths of all Goliaths, David can still win.

Because when it comes down to it, sports is life.

Tran will likely come back with a very bitter column
following UCLA’s loss to USC. E-mail him at
[email protected].