Column: Pursue your passion

This will be my last column.

Not just my last column as a Husky writing for the Daily Campus, but my last column period. Unlike most of my colleagues, I didn’t come here to study journalism, and I will be leaving UConn with a business degree. I am not telling you this to give you a sappy farewell or because I am giving you a self-serving background of my academic life, but I am telling you this to illustrate my point: I am doing this for the pure love of reading about, writing about and watching sports.

In the grand scheme of how the world works and what is important, sports don’t quite fit in at the top of the list with politics and current events, but they do have their place. Sports do a lot of things. They inspire, captivate, disappoint and uplift, sometimes in ways that other things aren’t capable of. There are few greater feelings on this planet than seeing one of your teams win a championship. It’s pure ecstasy, and that’s why I love sports so much.

The phrase “calm down, it’s just a game” is like hearing nails on a chalkboard to me. I understand that it isn’t a life-or-death matter, but having part of your soul invested into something you can’t control is a good thing, for better or worse. I’ll illustrate my point. I’m a Jets fan, and a diehard one at that. It’s a miserable existence and those who are not diehard Jets fans will never fully understand the day-in, day-out torment we few endure watching our team fall short every year. Despite that fact, I can say with certainty that I would have it no other way, because the day (should it ever come) that the Jets win the Super Bowl will be one of the best and most memorable days of my life. It will take one day to erase all the bad days of my fandom. I know that sounds absolutely insane, but can it really be too farfetched if hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, feel the exact same way?

And that is exactly the beauty of it all. Anyone more emotionally invested in sports than others will receive the amazing feelings that go along with their rooting interests’ successes. They will tell their kids, their kids’ kids, and if they’re lucky enough, even those kids’ kids about the incredible things they saw and times they had watching the game, and that really is a beautiful thing. It doesn’t matter whether you like the Yanks or the Sox, the Jets or the Pats, Michigan or Ohio State – that is why sports are so easy to watch and love. Even if you don’t feel the same way about it, that’s fine, because it’s flexible like that. Any level of interest is acceptable.

So that is what brought me to writing for the Daily Campus. Everyone should have their passions in life and find ways to keep them alive, sports or otherwise. While I am leaving UConn to pursue a different passion, sports will always be one for me. I hope you all keep your passions alive as well.