For those of you who don't like sports, I'm sorry. Saturday night's nerve-wracking, gut-wrenching, endless fingernail-biting, edge-of-your-seat gripping, captivatingly epochal thriller that saw first year Jordan Lalor's overtime snipe against the much-abhorred Colby sent the men's ice hockey team to the NESCAC semifinals. This will ensure the road to the final runs through the Sidney J. Watson just might have been my most memorable moment in my four years at this institution (please see story, page 20).
It was, without question, the most memorable sporting event I've been a part of here. Period. Absolutely no question about it. To be deadlocked in a scoreless tie for nearly fifty minutes against your most hated rivals, only to then watch those same foes score a quick goal with little time left, and then watch as your valiant classmates surreally equalize mere seconds later, and finally seal the victory with a goal...at home...in overtime, in front of a packed house of screaming, elated fans? Special doesn't even begin to describe it. And as each and every Bowdoin fan present or watching the Web cast will tell you (if they remember, that is, as spirits were certainly running at an all-time high) that was perhaps the best hockey game we've ever seen. That is, until the next day came along.
It was USA vs. Canada. Men's ice hockey. The Gold Medal game in the final athletic competition of the Vancouver Olympics. The Canucks had last beaten the Americans in the finals back in 2002 at the Salt Lake City games. Now, it was Team USA's turn to return the favor to their neighbors from the north on a Sunday afternoon, this time on Canadian soil. The Americans fought long and hard the entire way, which culminated with a breathtaking game-tying goal by the pride of the New Jersey Devils, Zach Parise, with only 24 seconds to play. But as a professional hockey player, no matter how hard you try, sooner or later you'll run into Canada's native son Sidney Crosby, who punished the Americans with the game-winning goal in overtime. But even though I leapt up to celebrate Parise's miraculous goal as if someone was napalming my rump, it dawned on me while the Canadians embraced each other in a whirlwind of joy, that despite the United States of America, my home country, losing in the Gold Medal game—to Canada, no less—truthfully, I could not have cared less.
Now surely, had the Americans been on the other side of that game, I probably would have gone ballistic, and undoubtedly would have been incredibly proud of this gutsy group of kids that Toronto Maple Leafs General Manager and Bowdoin father Brian Burke ingeniously assembled. And when they lost in overtime, I definitely don't remember feeling happy about it; I was upset, to be sure. But quite honestly, it had no detrimental effect on the rest of my evening. It would have been great had they won, but they didn't. And that was that.
Then I thought about Canada's reaction to the victory: a joyous sea of red rising and falling from the stands, and the sheer pandemonium that ensued from its home crowd; it reeked of ardor, zeal, and patriotism, and that's what really got me thinking. This win meant the world to these Canadian fans who had stuck by their side after an embarrassing loss to the Americans in the round robin play mere days ago, and their faith had been duly rewarded. The game may have been the most watched hockey game (27.6 million) since the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" (34.2 million), but seriously, to how many of those 27.6 million Americans watching Sunday afternoon would winning the gold medal mean the world? The answer to that question, of course, is not that many. And that's when it hit me.
For a nation that prides itself on its steadfast and unwavering patriotism that we allegedly exude with every step we take, we certainly direct very little of it toward backing our respective national teams. And if you think the chiefly apathetic reaction that the vast majority of Americans had to Sunday's overtime loss is the prime example here, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
We have already covered the lack of fervor being poured in by Americans in supporting our national hockey team, but what about the others? Whenever our national basketball team competes in the Olympics, we fans expect them to win gold every time. It is only when we do not win it that our emotions are unleashed. Take the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens for instance, when America finished with an unacceptable bronze medal on the court and a cacophony of boos and resentment reigned across the Atlantic Ocean from its fans back home all the way to Greece. Yet, when the team redeemed itself in Beijing in 2008 by wresting the gold back, it was expected, so we merely applauded. It is no different in baseball, and even though the World Baseball Classic is still a bit of a joke to most people, if the Americans don't win—which they have failed to do twice since the triennial tournament's inception in 2006—it's embarrassing. As far as I know, there is no American National Football team, but if there ever is one, and they compete in an international tournament, the same pressure-packed expectations will be held for them, too. There is no unified, passionate rooting for any of these national teams when they play to win, only unified, passionate disappointment if they lose. So why is there suddenly a glaring dearth of patriotism in backing these teams? I have a couple of ideas.
The first is that we love our American athletes, but we love them individually. There are few people in America who don't enjoy a good story, let alone a heroic one in athletic competition. Michael Phelps is the quintessential example of this, as he won over Americans' hearts in Beijing with jaw-dropping performances in the pool, and similar things can be said for now 42-year-old Dara Torres.
The second idea is that we are much more invested in the success of our domestic league teams, year in and year out, to give a rat's behind about our national sides. Don't believe me? Ask yourself whether you would want to see your favorite hockey team win a Stanley Cup or Team USA a gold medal last Sunday. Not a hockey person? How about this for you Bostonians: would you rather the Celtics win the NBA Finals or Team USA win gold? And for you New Yorkers: (another) Yankees World Series title or Team USA winning the WBC? It's a no-brainer: our everyday teams trump our national teams. But even if our loyalties lie elsewhere for our Team USA's, there must be a solution to this perplexing problem, and there is one: might I suggest soccer?
The beautiful game that has won over the hearts of almost every country on this planet except the United States has all the ingredients to bring about a passionate, patriotic backing for the American National team, especially with June's World Cup rapidly approaching: 1) Major League Soccer, America's domestic league, is light-years away from becoming as competitive as the European/South American/Asian/every other continents' leagues, unlike football, baseball, basketball, and hockey whose domestic leagues here in America are the best in the world. 2) Because of this, to some degree, we are definite underdogs to win in South Africa, and if there is any country that loves a good underdog story, it's us. 3) Soccer is a team game highlighted by the glitz and grandeur of individual players (Portugal may be a good team, but people watch them to catch a glimpse of the talismanic Cristiano Ronaldo; the same can be said about Argentina with Lionel Messi, and the Ivory Coast with Didier Drogba). 4) Soccer is still too new and exciting a sport to us that all it will take is an upset victory over England on June 12 in USA's opening World Cup match to pile Americans onto the proverbial band wagon.
Bowdoin has already done its part in securing the purchase of Fox Soccer Channel (which is scheduled to air on all campus televisions sometime in the near future) thanks to overwhelming student support and generous donations by Director of Athletics Jeff Ward and the Athletic Department as well as the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG), which will hopefully spark a following of the beautiful game for new viewers.
Let's keep our fingers crossed that it does, and that other Americans will start taking an interest as well, because believe it or not, the Team USA that we are most likely to back with the greatest amount of patriotic vigor and enthusiasm is the one we've been ignoring the longest.