It’s March Madness … Baby!

My husband is a really big college basketball fan. Make that a Syracuse Orange basketball fan. I can watch a game but I refuse to get so emotionally invested in a team.  And I admire, but I admit feel intimidated by, women who are big sports fans. I cannot understand my husband’s addiction to checking scores and talking stats the same way he cannot understand my addiction to watching news coverage of natural disasters  – or checking my blog stats.   But we have lived with our differences for over 17 years now. And, to prove that love rules above all were married on March 12, smack in the middle of March Madness.

I should have known what I was getting into back when we were dating. I remember going over to his house when he was home from grad school.  It seemed his whole extended family was over to watch a Syracuse basketball game. I was not allowed to talk until the commercial breaks.  I remember going to some Cal basketball games with his grad school buddies when we lived out in California.  Back when Jason Kidd was their Center. He and his friends talked basketball stats the whole way home on the BART. They may as well have been speaking in Chinese, I didn’t understand any of it.

How does my husband want to leave this world? He has told me that when his time comes, and I hope that’s 100 years from now, it will most likely be in his Lazy Boy chair watching Syracuse play UConn in double overtime during the NCAA tournament.

Ever since graduate school, he and his lab buddies, no matter what corner of the country they live in, keep a bracket going this time of year over a small wager. Now, I don’t remember him being concerned about his bracket picks at our wedding. I don’t think he had a small transistor radio in his ear as we stood under the chuppah, or wedding canopy.  And among our vows was one where he vowed that during our Maui honeymoon, he would not stay in our honeymoon suite watching the games. I’m just kidding.

Except one.

His alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania played against Nebraska that year and we watched that one game over Mai Tais by the poolside bar. It was the one game he said he really wanted to watch. Who was I to say no to my new husband’s one sports diversion – no obsession –  on our honeymoon?

Years have gone by and I still don’t share this passion for watching sports. I just don’t understand how he can get so completely riveted in a game that in the scheme of the world will not change his life. Except maybe for the few dollars he will win on his grad school bracket.

But I do enjoy watching my husband watching these games. I will even tolerate him flipping between one of my shows so he can check the score.

To give you an idea of the excessive celebration that goes on around here during March Madness … our first child was born in December.  You do the math.