They lost again today. “They” are the University of Iowa Hawkeye football team, my alma mater. They’re having a pretty mediocre year, at best, one week losing to the worst team in the Big Ten, the next week beating one of the best teams in the league. On Monday afternoons, a group of us geezers meet at George’s Buffet for drink and grumbling, as we do most afternoons, but on Mondays we spend much of our time going over the previous Saturday’s game, expressing our multitude of observations and opinions, the bulk of them as uninformed and oblivious as we can muster. But inevitably our confab will refer to the Hawkeyes either as “we” or “they” depending on whether the team won (“Why can’t we do that every week?,” Don will ask in frustration) or whether the team lost (“They looked like shit in a stopped-up crapper,” Bill will remark in frustration). And that’s probably the way most people use pronouns to refer to whatever teams in whatever sports they follow – winners are “we,” losers are “they.” We embrace linguistically our winning team, and spurn the losing team.
No comments:
Post a Comment