There are so many aspects to the Manti Te’o story that are interesting that this may soon become one of my favorite news events ever. I know that many people are sick of the story already and the fact that it really doesn’t matter but to me that is one of the fascinating parts of this whole thing.
Now I will admit that as a Notre Dame alumni I fall into a slightly different category here but there is a question as to why anybody cared in the first place. We spent months focused on the story of a football player (who we had never met) and his girlfriend (who we, as well as he, had never met) and how she tragically died of leukemia during the season. Sure there is the tragedy of someone dying young but sadly that happens every day. We don’t focus on it for months and then act appalled because the nature of the story changes. But tying it into a sports story completely changes the narrative.
We don’t typically grasp just how much of a story that we add over sports in order to create a better event. In reality all sports is a group of people in one color shirt challenge a group of people in another color shirt and eventually one side wins (or, in the case of soccer, end in a 0 - 0 tie and thus make the entire enterprise completely pointless.) As has often been said, on some level all you are doing is cheering laundry. So we create storylines and plotlines and create heroes and villains and describe long standing rivalries that typically have nothing to do with the competitors. We talk about the long standing rivalries between the Red Sox and the Yankees but do the players from Japan and the Dominican Republic really care about some games played and lopsided trades between these two teams nearly a hundred years ago?
The reason pro wrestling exists is because it allows for the creation of the drama of sports without having to worry about the fact of having random results. Instead of trying to find the plot line or resorting to the dreaded Olympic human interest story you write the story, determine the ending and then just perform it for the crowd, altering it based on the whims of the individuals who actually pay to watch pro wrestling. We scoff at wrestling while Bob Costas did the exact same thing every night in London.
So we have some right to be upset about being lied to in a story by Te’o. I still am in the camp that he was duped into thinking that she was real, decided to embellish the relationship because why let the truth get in the way of a good story and by the time he figured out that she wasn’t real the story had taken off and could not be retrieved. But we are lied to in every story about sports. We use sports to illustrate the human experience. For the allegories to work we have to tweak the game to serve the message. Manti did the exact same thing. It’s not entirely the same as being upset about the last scene of the Soprano’s but it is close.
My Life in Music Part 1 (1973): I’ve decided to start a new feature on the blog in honor of my turning forty this year. I figure that I can trace my entire life, interests and beliefs through the music that was created throughout my lifetime. So I will go year by year picking one song and artist that I feel represents at least some aspect of myself. I promise not to repeat artists and will do everything that I can to insure that I have seen each artist live in concert. That second one may be tougher, especially until I get to the mid-80s or so but I will certainly try my best.
For the start I will go back to an album that was released a month after my birth by a guy who literally lived in the next town over: John Prine with his song “Dear Abby”. This is a nice place to start given that Dear Abby just died even though I must admit I thought that she had died years ago. As a Chicagoan growing up I knew the story of Dear Abby and Ann Landers, twin sisters who wrote dueling advice columns for dueling newspapers and thus taught you that the people who provide advice are the same people who would publicly feud with each other. More importantly this song has the legendary refrain “You are who you are and you ain’t who you ain’t.” It has taken me nearly forty years to figure out who I am and who I am not. Once you get that lesson down life becomes easier. Not necessarily better but easier.
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