1. Although often used interchangeably, the words "uninterested" and "disinterested" mean two different things. Uninterested means just not caring. These days, I'm uninterested in college and professional football. I pay enough attention to the sport to know what teams are doing well so I'll know what the interested people around me are talking about when the subject comes up, but, on the whole, I don't care about football any longer. I'm uninterested.
When it comes to college basketball, I'm much more disinterested. I care a lot about the game, love seeing college basketball played, and enjoy spending hours watching teams go at it.
But, I'm mostly disinterested -- that is, I don't have a lot of investment in the games' outcomes. Now, I am not disinterested when the Zags play nor when the Ducks play. If they were in the tournament, I would not be disinterested if St. John's played. When the Ducks and Zags play, I'll have a vested emotional interest in the outcome, but for almost all the rest of the games, I am eager to see them played well, I enjoy the drama, I like to be surprised when lower seeded teams defeat teams supposedly their superior, but I'm largely disinterested in the outcomes. This is very unlike my younger days when I was a raging partisan. (I learned this from my father.)
Okay.
I still hold on to some irrational partisanship. As my dad used to say, during the Cold War, about teams he rooted against, "I wouldn't root for ______ if they were playing Russia." I feel the same way about Syracuse. No disinterest there. No rationality, either! I wouldn't root for Syracuse if they were playing Russia. Please. Do not ask me to be consistent.
These games are a source of deep pleasure, no matter who wins. Oddly enough, I'm surprisingly removed, emotionally, from whether my picks in my brackets are successful. I find it fun to join with other people and see how their brackets turn out and I'm very interested to see how it all comes out, but I today I responded to my successful picks the same as the ones I missed. I said, "Oh well. The games were sure fun to watch."
I mean really fun!
2. Today featured a lot of fun games. Three games went into overtime and two of those resulted in exciting upsets as North Texas upset Purdue and Oral Roberts shocked Ohio State. To my surprise, Oregon State handily defeated Tennessee. Oregon State was picked to finish dead last in the Pac-12. They came alive and swept through the conference tournament, but I figured they'd be gone after one game in the national tournament. No way! Do beavers pounce in the wild? I don't know -- but I do know that the OSU Beavers pounced on Tennessee right from the get go, defeated them handily, and now must face another OSU, another orange and black squad, the very tough Oklahoma State Cowboys, on Sunday.
3. Equally fun to watching these games is texting with Byrdman and T2 throughout the day. I also had a few online conversations with Stu. My favorite exchange of the day wasn't about basketball, though. Back in July of 2013, Byrdman, T2, and I got together at T2's house and, after drinking some beer on Terry's patio, went on a roam for some foam. Today, Byrdman recalled our trip to Beermongers and he (and I) really enjoyed our pour of Ayinger Helles Lager. I shared a daydream I'd had the other day, coincidentally, that featured the three of us roaming for foam again in the Portland area. It was so much easier to do these get togethers back in the years around 2013. I lived in Eugene. One of Byrdman's sons lived in West Linn. We were all retired. But, now, of course, I live in Kellogg. Byrdman's son no longer lives in Oregon. I'd be up for making an Oregon road trip with Byrdman one day to pay Terry another visit and to go on another beer hunt together.
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