No one tunes in to sports to not feel good. “Feel good” is the lingua franca for appreciation of the sweaty arts. But by its nature appreciation is a subjective thing.
One person sees straight lines not all that different from the old broadcast signal you’d wake up to after passing out on the couch in the era before 24-hour programming; someone else sees Mark Rothko’s modern masterpieces.
Take the Super Bowl. The feel-good storyline was prepared well in advance: Peyton Manning, the sainted son of football royalty, overcame advancing age and physical mortality (four neck surgeries!) to put together the best regular season any NFL quarterback has ever managed. The meticulous builder of children’s hospitals and one-man advertising campaign for Omaha, Neb., needed only a solid performance in New Jersey Sunday night and a second Super Bowl title to never again have to answer questions about his legacy and his post-season stumbles—the obvious pin-prick in any “greatest quarterback ever” argument.
The idea of Manning—he with the nearly tortured commitment to precision; the ultimate control freak in a league run by them—clearly resonated among those of us who are precise only about the crispiness of our chicken wings and the temperature of our beer. Nearly half of every household in ’Merica tuned in to see Manning climb his last mountain.
Most may have not returned from the fridge when the long-snap from centre Manny Ramirez sailed by him and into the Denver Broncos’ end zone as Manning was busy making adjustments on the fly on the first play of the game. Seattle earned a safety and Manning’s day went downhill from there.
The feel-good story had turned into nightmare for Manning and, worse, a horrible Super Bowl for everyone watching, minus those who could somehow cheer for Pete Carroll and his “I’m smarter than everyone” ways running the Seattle Seahawks. They saw art, the rest of us saw an awful football game and a kitchen covered in sticky chicken wing sauce.
But that doesn’t mean the sports world is completely absent some feel-good vibes. The Toronto Maple Leafs’ Phil Kessel is doing his best. He is the anti-Manning, and in that sense a throwback to the idea that sports are fun and athleticism is a gift given to a select few, rather than something we all have somewhere within us if only we worked as hard as Manning.
Kessel’s genius is that he relieves us from any nagging doubt we somehow failed to reach our potential due to a lack of effort or will. Kessel gives every impression he’s great because he was born that way and in that sense he cuts us all a break.
Kessel helped the Leafs extend their post-Winter Classic surge to nine wins in their past 11 games with a hat trick against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night and hit the 30-goal mark for the fifth time.
It’s hard not to like Kessel in part because he seems to care not at all whether he’s liked or not; image management is not really his thing as he revealed on the final 24/7 episode when he proved that the life of the big-money pro athlete might be just as easy as we’re all tempted to believe: “We’ll hang out, watch games, watch TV, play video games, go to dinner, come home, watch some more TV and go to bed,” Kessel told the HBO cameras of his daily routine with roommate Tyler Bozak. “Other than that we don’t do s–t.”
It is an acknowledgement of what every hockey fan figures anyway, which feels good in its own right.
This past weekend could have made way for one of the most exciting moments in recent Canadian basketball history—not exactly a tall order we realize—when FIBA announced the four wild-card entries for this summer’s Basketball World Cup. With countries like Germany, Italy and China dropping out of consideration at the last minute, the prospect of Canada getting a chance to show its emerging talent to the world suddenly seemed real—how good would watching a Tyler Ennis-to-Andrew Wiggins fast break against Spain in Spain have felt?
Alas, the spots went to Turkey, Brazil and Greece—almost predictably—and wildly unpredictably to No. 39-ranked Finland, who sources say paid well in excess of the $600,000 required “donation” to FIBA and brought some sponsorship dollars from Angry Birds game developer Rovio.
Call it a bribe, call it the business of the game; it’s clear Canada is going to have to earn everything they get in international basketball, but won’t get a chance until Olympic qualifying begins in 2015.
There is nothing to feel good about here, so we’ll move along.
The end of the NFL season makes way for what is typically an orgy of feel-good that comes in the form of the Olympics, the winter version of which begins on Friday in Sochi, Russia.
It is generally impossible not to feel good about the Olympics, even if it is easy to get distracted by the madness of a country like Russia—or any country—spending $50 billion to host a festival of sliding and gliding and jumping via snow and ice. It’s a collection of activities that are at best mutations of things we all did as kids with lugers being simply the best tobogganers.
Add in the spectre of terrorism and corruption, though, and these games may test even the hardiest believer in the Olympic ideal. But then the fresh-faced winners and teary-eyed losers will share their stories and we won’t be able to help but get drawn to their personal history of dedication and sacrifice coupled with their ability to execute when the light is brightest.
It gets you every time in a way even a Peyton Manning Super Bowl triumph never really would.
And then someone will pour their heart out on the icy stage, like Canadian Joannie Rochette did in Vancouver, skating to a bronze medal just days after the sudden death of her mother, bringing us all along on a journey of universal hardship.
In those moments we come together as sport—like powerful art—touches our hearts. It makes us feel better for watching, if not always good.
