- December 20, 2024
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No pledges to lose weight or save money. Nope, this year, my New Year's resolutions are all about sports.
BY MATT MENCARINI | STAFF WRITER
It’s that time, again, when everybody everywhere makes resolutions they’ll forget about and break within the first three months of the coming year.
So what I’ve decided to do is scrap the “I’ll workout mores,” and “I’ll put away more for retirements,” to focus on better, more important stuff. Stuff like sports.
I now present you with my four New Year’s resolutions to become a better sports fan. (You might want to pause here for the drum roll.)
1) I will stop thinking I know more than the coaches. This one might be tough, because there are times when I actually think I do. But in reality, the coaches watch film, know their team better than I do and know the opponent better than I do.
So the next time a coach makes a call I don’t agree with, no matter how dumb it may seem, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume there was more going on than I saw. And if I have the opportunity, I’ll ask them about it.
2) I’m going to start reading the opposing team’s beat writers. I can justify this added Internet time for work purposes (great writers need to be great readers). But I also think it’ll make me a better fan if I have a better grip on some of the day-to-day from teams I only see when they play a Chicago team.
There are some great beat writers out there, telling some great stories, and they don’t always write for the teams I follow. And they may not write for your teams, either. Go out and find them.
3) Before the end of January, I will watch the Chicago Blackhawks play. So, obviously, this one is more of a hope than a resolution, since I’m completely unable to affect the status of the current NHL labor strife.
4) I won’t, under any circumstances, forget that I’m watching a game. It’s not a war. The athletes aren’t crusaders. It’s simply a children’s game being played by youth, high school, college and professional athletes, and I’ll treat it as such.
And maybe, just maybe, by sticking to a few of my resolutions, I'll stop yelling at players and coaches hundreds of miles away, through TV screens, like a maniac. But let's not get too carried away on that one. Remember: There's always 2014.
