Postgame Press: Emotional and illogical

I am angry. I am steaming. Why? Absolutely no logical reason. That is why I love sports. For the past half hour, I have been reading articles about the NFL draft, which is scheduled for a little more than a week from now. Manyofsaidarticles are predicting that the Browns will draft a quarterback with the No. 1 pick. I am beyond frustrated with this because I would hate if that happened. It might. I certainly cannot rule it out. I just have to fight it. I feel deep in my soul, in my stomach and in my heart, that Saquon Barkley, the Penn State running back, should go to the Browns at No. 1 and that they should then take their favorite available quarterback with the fourth pick. I have no clue why I feel this so adamantly, but I do.

It is the same reason that I absolutely love Luol Deng, and have since he was on the Bulls when I was younger. Deng was good, but he wasn't that good. Nothing made me decide he was my favorite player. I just decided it. In a similar fashion, it makes me want to pull my hair out when people talk about Carmelo Anthony as a fantastic NBA player. What has he ever done to me? Absolutely nothing.

Sports are emotional. Sports are illogical. Sports are debatable. Unlike many of my articles, I have no real solution to this one. I have no studies that prove why sports make us emotional. I cannot explain why we hate some players and love others without reason. All I know is that it happens and that I love it. A heated debate is fun when facts are involved, but often sports debates are fueled much more by emotions. This logic works in almost no other circumstances. I dare you to try to win an argument next time strictly by saying, "I just hate that," or "Oh my gosh, I swear they will go down in history." Let me know how that works out. Sleeper picks and busts do not happen in most other areas of life. A good gut feeling in sports can provide bragging fodder, while being wrong may cause never-ending pain as your friends hold a bad opinion against you.

It is really tough to find a lesson in all of this. There may not be one. If there is though, it's that we do not have to understand sports and how we feel about them. The way we love sports, and our teams and our favorite players cannot be explained by true reason. Sure, we grew up somewhere, but that does not explain why we will cry and scream obscenities at people trying to get a ball through a hoop or at a team that we do not care about not drafting a running back. (Please, Browns just take Saquon. For me. For my gut.) The absurdity that is our irrationality about sports is part of what makes them so much fun.