Scottie doesn’t know (sports)

I don’t have an ex-girlfriend named Fiona, and I don’t think Matt Damon had sex with one of my previous girlfriends on my birthday, but I guess I don’t know. My name is Scottie Hvidt, and I’m a junior on the men’s water polo team. I’m one of those students who struggles to stay off espn.com while suffering through lectures on less important things, like the connections between religion and politics.

Last summer, I found my calling when I was offered the opportunity to work for a startup dot-com company as a blogger for a sports social network. I immediately fell in love with a profession that allowed my distraction to become my job. I hope you’ll enjoy this column, which will be geared toward offering a satirical outlook on sports. And while you may be of the mindset that Scottie doesn’t know much, I think you’ll find that I really do know sports.

Most diehard sports fans grow up with a cynical outlook on professional sports, and I am no exception. When you watch your teams suffer year after year, you have to find an excuse that allows you to retain an ounce of pride.

My youth in San Francisco was filled with minor triumphs, as the 49ers experienced success in the early ’90s under Steve Young, and Barry Bonds, still loaded on steroids, pelted out home run after home run for the San Francisco Giants as the MVP awards poured in for him.

While the Golden State Warriors have always sucked, they at least had Chris Mullin on the court rather than running the front office. But ever since Steve Young retired and Felix Rodriguez stepped onto the mound in game six of the World Series in 2002 and blew a 5-0 lead, the teams to which I devoted years of my life have given me nothing more than empty hopes in return.

This cynicism recently culminated in a belief that professional sports were rigged against me. I became convinced that the leagues and major networks fixed games and playoffs in major sports in an attempt to obtain a greater audience.

For instance, after my Giants lost to the New York Mets in the first round of the 2000 MLB playoffs, I felt that the umpires made calls favoring the Mets at crucial moments in games in hopes of producing the eventual Subway Series between the Mets and the Yankees.

The historic series that featured my two least favorite teams in the NBA, the Sacramento Kings and the Los Angeles Lakers, in the 2002 Western Conference final struck me at the time as a complete hoax.

Everyone now knows the infamous Tim Donaghy story and his role in the actual corruption of game six, but even at the time, my father and I were convinced the game had been fixed. The Lakers went on to win games six and seven and capture their third consecutive NBA championship.

But despite the NBA’s obviously controversial recent track record and my own cynicism with the MLB’s attempt to create a more marketable World Series, I have remained convinced that the Super Bowl is pure, in a class of its own. Not because the NFL is necessarily an unblemished league without questionable members, but simply because the Super Bowl has developed into an indestructible event.

Let’s be honest, the Super Bowl is a bigger and more universal holiday than Christmas. Sports fans and non-fans alike come together on Super Bowl Sunday to have outrageous barbecues and extravagant parties. Super Bowl XLIII could have featured the Cincinnati Bengals and the Detroit Lions, and half the country would have watched it.

The Arizona Cardinals have historically been one of the worst franchises in the history of professional sports and have a practically nonexistent fanbase. The Pittsburgh Steelers are arguably the best NFL franchise and have tremendous fans in Steeler Nation, despite being hated by other fans.

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If this matchup had been on “Monday Night Football” midway through the season, few people would have cared. Yet the Super Bowl, which falls at the end of January when there is absolutely nothing else going on in the sports world but the pointless NHL All-Star Game, has every newspaper in the country focused on predictions and analysis for two straight weeks.

Advertisers’ yearly marketing strategies focus on the Super Bowl since commercials have a reputation for being hilarious: It’s one of the few televised events where viewers don’t TiVo through the commercials. Most importantly, the game features an always-entertaining halftime show with Janet Jackson’s boob or U2’s post-9/11 performance. The Super Bowl appeals to anyone and everyone. So though half of the people watching do not understand football or know that John Madden was a Hall of Fame coach before he was a video game or broadcaster, they are entertained by the spectacle that is the Super Bowl no matter what teams are in it and how good the game is.

While I might have been more excited to see Tom Brady matched up against Peyton Manning, I still would have been glued to my couch if it were a Super Bowl with Alex Smith (yes, I can make fun of my own team’s debacle) and the dreadful Oakland Raiders. My cynical view is based on the idea that sports had lost their purity because television and the media control every league. The NFL remains the most successful televised sports league precisely because it is designed for commercials and has universal appeal.

The NBA and MLB have tried to compete with the NFL for viewers and have cheated the game. If I were from New York, Los Angeles or Boston, I would have no problem with the leagues giving my teams a little help, but Northern California sports have been very unsuccessful this century, and, as a result, I still need to be convinced that it is not just because my teams suck. It might be the case that my teams are awful, but then again, Scottie doesn’t know.