I’ve written before about how I’m not much of a sports fan. I don’t get sports, really.
Last night, Super Bowl Sunday, I went to bed at 10 p.m. I’ll bet I was one of a handful of people sleeping here in Indianapolis given that the hometown team, the Colts, played. Unfortunately, it didn’t go our way; when I awoke this morning the New Orleans Saints had won, 31-17.
I remember from the Colts’ successful 2007 Super Bowl that it’s really pretty cool to wake up in the city that’s home to the new champion. I shared in the joy of it with everyone else here. But no, I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, not in 2007, not last night. I didn’t watch a single game this season. And it’s not entirely because I don’t get sports.
It’s because I’m still not over the 1991 season.
From the time the Colts moved to Indianapolis in 1984, they stunk. On ice. In their first six years here, they had only two winning seasons. And then 1991 capped them all as they went 1 and 15.
Why do I know all of this if I don’t get sports? Because I worked for a little AM radio station in Terre Haute in 1991. We were on the Colts radio network, and the games pre-empted my Sunday afternoon shifts. It fell to me to “run the board,” which meant I sat in the studio at the mixing board, finger poised and ready to press a button to play local commercials as soon as the announcer said, “And this is the Colts <pause> radio network.” That meant I had to listen to the Colts lose, and often lose big, week after week after week after wee-hee-hee-heek.
I’m genuinely disappointed that the Colts lost. But it might just take one more Super Bowl victory before I can move past the trauma of 1991!
Radio is a cruel mistress, as I’ve written about here and here.
