Like many sports fans, I occasionally play the soft-headed liberal and declare I most enjoy sporting contests when the two sides, or players, are evenly matched.
I'm lying.
Two days ago I watched a basketball game in which, after the first quarter, my team was ahead 41-4.
I kept watching.
Hello. My name is David and I'm a fan of the UConn women's basketball team.
Who have won their last 71 games, by at least 10 points each. (Photo above by Stephen Slade for University of Connecticut Athletics Department.)
Now let me say two things before I explain.
First, I don't require blowouts. Back on March 7, UConn trailed South Florida at the half. I kept watching and they pulled it out, 77-51.
Second, I didn't start following UConn when they started winning. I grew up in Connecticut, where there aren't a lot of hometown team options. So I've been following UConn basketball since the late 1950s, when the women's team didn't exist, the men's team played in the Yankee Conference and Jackie Rose was the star guard.
To any suggestion that rooting for the UConn women must mean I latch onto winners, I would note that my football team is the Cleveland Browns, whose last win of significance came in 1964.
So I won't apologize because I enjoy watching the UConn women beat other teams by 20, 40, 60 points.
Now, sure, in the broader sports-fan sense I do recognize the appeal of a more competitive match.
My affinity for blowouts simply increases in direct proportion to my rooting interest. The more I want one team to win, or lose, the less particular I become about the score by which it's accomplished.
If the Dodgers have scored 12 runs with one out in the first inning, I'm having a good night. If the Yankees are down 15-1 in top of the second, I'm enjoying every pitch for the rest of the game.
I love a 1-0 baseball game or a 28-24 football game that's decided with a goal line stand on the final play.
I love it, that is, when my team has the "1" or the "28." If my team has the "0" or the "24," let's put it this way. I was two years old when Bobby Thompson hit his home run in the 1951 playoffs, and I still get depressed thinking about it.
I went to a Dodgers-Mets game in 1970 where Tommy Agee stole home to give the Mets a 2-1 walkoff win. It was a great baseball game. Forty-six years later I'm still silently screaming at Jim Brewer to look over his shoulder and not let Agee get that jump.
So maybe I'm thinking I deserve it when the UConn women cruise to an 85-39 victory. It's God's way of throwing me a little something for my suffering.
Then there's also this. The UConn women simply play a game that's a pleasure to watch. The passing, the shot selection, the defense. Things that, to be honest, a lot of other basketball these days is no longer about. It's not that other teams are terrible. It's just that the UConn women are really good.
Geno Auriemma, the UConn coach, gets asked a lot whether it's bad for the women's sport that UConn wins so many games by scores you'd normally associate with pinball.
He says no, and he's right. He says UConn's success challenges other schools to elevate their own game, the way Tiger Woods's dominance a few years ago forced other golfers to compete at his level.
I also don't think UConn is invincible. True, UConn's Breanna Stewart is the best player in the women's game. But if Moriah Jefferson, Morgan Tuck, Kia Nurse and Katie Lou Samuelson are just a little off, and Notre Dame or South Carolina has a night when the shots are all falling, UConn could lose.
So it's not like there's zero tension ever.
Also, these blowouts aren't a permanent entitlement. Next year, when Stewart, Jefferson and probably Tuck are gone, UConn will drop back into the pack. Top level of the pack, but still, the pack.
I can live with games in this year's NCAA tournament, or next season, that are decided by five points.
I just live less stressfully if it's 30 or 40.
If that makes me a bad person, or just an obnoxious sports fan, so be it. I'd rather say a hundred Hail Marys in penance after the game than have my team need one Hail Mary to win it.