Every year, without fail, October means the arrival of midterms. But this time of year means more than all-nighters and coffee runs. You know what I’m talking about – the football season and baseball playoffs.
It is a time of year when Saturdays and Sundays become black holes in which no work gets done. It is when friends and roommates from different parts of the country are pitted against each other.
At some schools this rivalry is muted because a football team unites the entire campus every Saturday. Others have a consistently elite basketball program that can unite the student base as they look forward to the season ahead. But, here at GW, it seems to be every fan for himself.
Take my apartment, for example. One roommate is a perfectly likeable and outgoing guy, but come fall he becomes one of the lowest life forms on earth – a Dallas Cowboys fan.
We barely had time to settle into the school year before the Cowboys matched up against my team, the Philadelphia Eagles, in a big Monday Night Football game. There was plenty of trash-talking on both sides, but in the end the Cowboys finished on top. The Eagles will have another chance, but it may take a little restraint not to toss my roommate out the window if I hear about “America’s Team” again this semester.
Another roommate is a diehard Boston fan – the most annoying type of fan that exists. It doesn’t matter what sport it is, or even if the teams we’re rooting for are in the same conference, there is always trash-talking. A Red Sox loss the same day as a Phillies win? You know he will hear about it. An Eagles loss when the Patriots come out on top? Here comes the talk about the great Bill Belichick.
With all of the Red Sox fans on campus, I could only imagine what a World Series berth against them would mean. My roommate and I would probably have to watch the games at separate locations or have a U.N. peacekeeping force in the apartment. Our resident Cowboy fan can’t fill the role, as his comments during the darker innings of the Phillies’ 7-5 win on Tuesday night showed his true colors. He was lucky the only things within arm’s reach that I could throw at him were soft.
What if there were something here at GW to hold us all together at this time of year?
At times, Colonials basketball has been a unifier, but it has always been brief and intermittent. The dominating 2005-06 season, during which the men’s team went undefeated in the regular season, is a thing of the past. Without such a unifying force on campus, GW students are left with no one to root for except their hometown teams.
In the meantime, in the name of unity, can’t fans from New England, Philadelphia and Dallas all agree to root against New York?
The writer is a senior majoring in international affairs.
