It's OK to be sad

I’m going to talk about sports in just a second.

More specifically, I’m going to explore why I’m not agonizing over the possibility that Jedd Fisch will be lured away from his current position as the head coach of the college football team at the glorious institution I once attended: the University of Washington.

Then I’m going to talk about this week’s column for the News Tribune, which is about sports betting.

But first I’m going to talk about being sad. My most recent piece for Seattle Magazine is about sadness. More specifically, it’s about the fact that young men are often urged to resist or fight this emotion, to display toughness.

There are some advantages to this approach, but these expectations — which were epitomized by something our parish priest said to me the night my Dad died — might also explain why some men wind up choosing to withhold and remain emotionally unavailable.

I’ve written these sort of personal essays for Seattle Magazine for the past three years, which was not at all what I expected when I first reached out to the executive editor. I pitched a story about taking my then-girlfriend now-wife out to dinner at Canlis for the first time, I wound up writing a feature on Pete Carroll and next thing you know I’m writing about everything from my drinking problem to depression.

OK. Enough with my feelings. Let’s get to the sports ball and why I should be worried about another school poaching Jedd Fisch.

The bloodletting has already commenced at the highest levels of the sport. LSU and Penn State – two teams ranked in the preseason top 10 – have fired their coaches and it’s not even Halloween. Fisch won’t be considered for either of those jobs. Florida might look at him, though. UCLA certainly will.

The Washington Huskies are 6-2 and have a bye this week. None of their next three opponents have a winning record, and while I’m not one of these deluded types who’s entertaining the idea of a playoff berth, I will say that the Huskies are looking like a team that could contend in 2026.

If Fisch stays.

If he goes? Well, we’ve seen what happens when a coach goes, and in this case, it might be even more dramatic because I assume that quarterback Demond Williams would follow Fisch to his next stop much like he followed Fisch to this one.

The fact that I’m not supremely anxious about what happens next should be a warning sign to the people who run college football.

You see, I’m the kind of moron the sport has long depended on. The kind of idiot who paid for season tickets even after I moved away from Seattle. Someone who donated that season-ticket price to the school in the COVID year of 2020 even though we couldn’t go to games.

I go to bowl games. I buy merch. I’ve actually complained about adidas’s puzzling refusal to develop new products for me to buy.

While my enthusiasm for my school’s team is not necessarily waning, it is changing. I am officially exhausted by the constant hysteria about “what Washington needs to compete in the Big Ten” (i.e. more money spent on football).

It probably doesn’t help that Fisch has fully leaned into the increasingly mercenary nature of the spot. That might be the best approach in college football’s current form, but it is not one that resonates with me.

It would be better for Washington if he stays.

At the risk of glossing over everything the Huskies have to play for this season, I believe they could be really good next year. In his first year as a starter, Williams is already one of the most exciting quarterbacks in the country. True freshmen like Dezmen Roebuck, Rylon Dillard-Allen and Jack Mills are not only playing, they’re standing out.

I realize how fragile this is. How much it depends on keeping Fisch, and perhaps my refusal to spend too much time worrying about this is a coping mechanism. I’m trying to protect myself.

Or maybe I’ve found my limit, and there’s not any more that college football can wring out of me.

💰️ Gambling with your reputation 💰️ 

I am not someone who bets on sports. This is not a moral position so much as a reflection of the fact that I don’t enjoy it. The self-loathing I experienced after losing a bet, the feeling that I wasted money, outweighs any thrill I get of winning, and I simply don’t posess the confidence or optimism necessary to believe I’m the one who will beat the odds.

I am fascinated by gambling, though. Both the mentality that gamblers possess, the discipline and the systems they use. I have one friend I would consider to be a successful sports gambler. I have several others who insist they are, but I suspect they’re not being totally honest about their (lack of) winnings.

Sports betting is now legal in 38 of the 50 states in the country. That includes Washington where you are allowed to place bets while on the premises of tribal casinos. Money from gambling companies has flooded into the media entities that cover sports, and whenever some sort of gambling scandal flares up — which is what happened last week — the people who work for these media entities tend to purse their lips and get real serious as they talk about the dangers of sports gambling.

I find this to be fairly self-indulgent and completely misguided, and I wrote about that in this week’s column for The News Tribune.

🎤 Hear me, Hear me 🎤