The Way We Rationalize Obsessive Fandom Now

It was a Sunday morning not long ago and I was about two-thirds of the way through the full college basketball scoreboard, over 100 games of it, scanning the box score of a 12-point Miami (Fla.) win over Florida Gulf Coast, which I have to assume is an actual school, when it hit me like an uppercut: there is absolutely no reason I should be looking at this.

Of course, this is not a new phenomenon to the Internet. Whether it’s porn-related or not, there are countless times each week you are struck by this realization, especially if you are online as often as I (and most of you reading this are). But even among the pantheon of cat-fighting-puppet or hospital-staff-lip-synching videos, vitriolic opinion blogs about politics and/or upsetting articles on bad websites, wanting to know who played well and who did not in a meaningless and uncompetitive road victory by The U seems, well, insignificant. At least it should to someone with no connection at all to either school.

This moment of clarity also got me to thinking (always a bad idea), and then set me on a mission to determine how, exactly, I came to follow regularly so many college hoops teams around the country. In many cases, it was easy to decipher, usually just a personal connection — my father went there, I lived near there as a kid, I saw them play one time in person and it just stuck, etc.

But then there are those Miami-FGC type games that seem to defy logic. As I dove in, the reasons ran the gamut: from places onetime Kentucky players transferred to to a former roommate’s favorite team, from barely Division I schools that feature surprisingly good players to schools that feature guys my program almost recruited. This latter reason, I am certain, is the nerdiest and most time-wasting of all of them.

And it’s how I came to check up on Hunter McClintock, redshirt freshman guard averaging seven points a game at Oral Roberts. McClintock was never actually a Kentucky player, nor even a real recruit. He was instead a brief fascination for UK fans when, as a late blooming (and still unsigned) point guard, he was deemed a diamond in the rough based on some heavily edited YouTube clips . Now I see he has gone on to new things. I, apparently, have not.

I also caught myself scanning the box score of Thursday’s game between Georgia Southern and the Citadel, a game the Citadel Bulldogs won by 13 points. Now I can’t say that I’m a steadfast Southern Conference guy. I mean, I’ll watch a few minutes of anything basketball-related on cable, but this game wasn’t even on cable so far as I can tell. My interest in this game was confined to one of the Citadel’s bench players: Morakinyo “Big Mike” Williams.

You’ve never heard of this guy, with good reason. Williams was among the very last of Tubby Smith’s final run of terrible recruits, a 7-foot project Tubby managed to steal from powerful American University. Williams was bad enough that Smith’s successor, Billy Gillispie, couldn’t even find PT for him that first, miserable season. But in a previous life as a Kentucky sports blogger I found a way to interview Big Mike, and though he never really saw the floor, I always felt an affinity for him based on his taking a few minutes to respond to my request.

Clearly unplayable, Williams transferred to Duquesne, where he broke out to the tune of 2.3 points and 2.3 rebounds per game. Then he graduated early and apparently bolted again, this time to play as a graduate student at The Citadel, where his official bio begins rather pointedly, “Morakinyo has improved.” Both he and I can only hope this is true, or at least that he’s soon enough going to graduate and disappear so as to stop occupying my life with his extreme mediocrity. It’s his fault, you see.

But Williams does fit into a certain type of completist fanship I subscribe to. I must subscribe to it because I also follow up on former Kentucky players A.J. Stewart (Texas State), Kevin Galloway (Texas Southern) and Matt Pilgrim (Oklahoma State). All three were run out of town when John Calipari arrived to make room for all those NBA draft picks. I should feel bad for them, and I do a little bit. Maybe that’s why I still check up on them. Or maybe I’m just in need of help.

Or not. Because for diehards like myself, following former players is an understandable way to be a fanatic for your program to the bitter end. After all, recruiting and positive player development is the lifeblood of a good program. Then again, watching how recruiting plays out can also be a pretty interesting way to see a program’s lack of development, too. Gillispie was famously taking verbals from eighth graders and guys no one else wanted. As fans, we tried really hard to find the good in this, but there wasn’t much. So actually it’s doubly satisfying in a way to see the great Drunken One’s zirconium-in-the-rough recruits sucking elsewhere. (Billy Clyde, you had me at “That’s really a bad question.”)

Sure, these program-based connections beget some silly fascinations, I’ll grant you. There are still legit reasons to dive into the deep end of the scoreboard, though. After all, it’s important to see how future opponents are faring, right? That’s why I check Southeastern Conference scores every day, as well as scores from Kentucky’s better non-conference opponents like North Carolina, Indiana and Notre Dame. OK, I admit it, I also check in on Mississippi Valley State and Coppin State. And Penn, sure. Gotta play the Quakers this year.

Oh, and the teams you’ve already played, well, they affect your RPI, so I have to make sure and continue to check up every few days on how UCONN, Oklahoma and Washington are doing, if not East Tennessee State and Boston University. But I check them, too, of course.

But those teams all at least have a connection to my favorite team. Not so much with tracking schools Kentucky never plays and whose only reason for being on my radar is that friends of mine were fans. This rarely occurs to me, however, even as I check to see how Temple, Maryland and Providence perform, regardless of who is coaching them, playing for them or opposing them. I guess I root for them as part of being a good friend or something. Not that any of my friends know I’m doing it. Because somehow it would just seem a little weird to tell them because they’d probably have to respond with something like, “Thanks?”

Or, who knows, maybe they’ be flattered. They’d at least care, I bet. My ex-girlfriend went to Rutgers. I don’t think she’d really give a rip that I still look in on that disaster in Piscataway. In fact, she might even find it a touch creepy. Is it? I mean, there aren’t really even many good players there anymore. They all transferred away. And I’ll probably follow them where they go, too. Because I do appreciate a good prospect at an off-the-grid location. This is how I end up at some of the worst box scores in the game, matchups involving bottom-feeders Colorado, San Jose State and Detroit, for example. It’s a little like finding that unknown indie band all your friends will be really into next year. There’s a certain geeky pleasure in being on top of the next Paul Millsap before anyone else (who isn’t as geeky as you are) is.

And then, finally, there’s the inexplicable ones. Like the aforementioned Canes-whatever-Florida-Gulf-Coast’s-mascot-is clash or this one, a fine test of wills between Derwin Kitchen and his Florida State Seminoles and Hartford. I mean, seriously. Were I to have access to a hit count on links at ESPN, the number of clicks on that particular box score would be so low as to depress me. But still I pore over it as if somewhere buried within was a hidden code that unlocks the secret room where they keep Bobby Sura forever frozen. Just in case, you know.

I suppose most of this is just my own neurosis. And I’m not hurting anyone, except maybe my poor three-year-old son who stares up at me with sad eyes while holding up toys as I ignore him to see whether SMU beat Western Kentucky.

Because Western has been struggling this year and I’d expected so much more out of them since Steffphon Pettigrew is now a senior and Oklahoma transfer Juan Patillo has joined the frontcourt. …

— oh GOD, it’s happening again…

Someone please tell my family I love them. I’ll be back, eventually. There’s just a few things I need to check on first.

Originally from Kentucky, JL Weill now writes from Washington, DC. His take on politics, culture and sports can be found at The New Deterrence and on Twitter.

Image by Mircea, from Flickr.