I’m the office nerd when it comes to sports, which can be pretty isolating.
I never played team sports growing up and as a family I don’t remember following any professional teams.
It just wasn’t on my parents’ radar, I suppose.
The one KU basketball game I attended while a student there in the 1970s left me shell-shocked. In journalism school, a photography assignment was to shoot a KU football game. Standing on the sidelines, I got bowled over. My shoes went flying as did my camera.
I was so humiliated that I didn’t even notice the cuts and bruises as some sympathetic souls helped me gather myself together.
I can feel my cheeks flush just recalling the incident some 50 years later.
Sports and I were never meant to be, I figured.
At work, I avoided the morning-after recaps, knowing I had nothing to contribute.
And even if I wanted to catch the fandom wave, I hadn’t earned it. To be a real fan, you have to stick with the team through thick and thin.
“Ted Lasso” taught me that.
On Sunday, I dipped my toe into the Chiefs elixir when I began to watch the game against the Buffalo Bills between snippets of the Australian Open.
That I found football more entertaining than tennis was a first.
By the fourth quarter, I never changed the channel.
Shortly before that game, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had withdrawn from the Republican presidential nomination race. The news did not register on my scale of emotions.
We are more than 285 days away from the general election and I’ve had election fatigue for twice that long.
