One thing I’m not sure I have ever confessed in a column is my love of sports.
So here I go I guess.
I have always played many sports, both in my youth and as an adult. Among my favourites played are soccer, baseball, and my short ball hockey career with a team based out of Drayton under the awesome name of “The Hat Trick Swayzes”. Although I’m not sure anyone ever scored a hat trick during my time on the team. I digress, more of that story is for another column.
Now since having children, I have had to scale back my athletics significantly however I fill that gaping void by watching sports.
The months of September and October are among my favourite for sports TV watching.
The Blue Jays are perpetually in the second wild-card spot race. I admit it’s exciting but I’d like for a change to be chasing the division title. Actually, I take that back, any postseason baseball is better than none.
Perhaps a new love of mine is the National Football League (NFL). Also kicking off in September.
I can’t take complete credit for this realization, as my husband and his family are avid Dallas Cowboys fans.
Try not to pity them, they at least have a handful of rings to their name.
Because I like to stir the pot a little bit, I have pledged my allegiance to the Kansas City Chiefs for the past five years. I believe I am in too deep now and may have lost my life to the Chiefs.
At the moment it’s not hard to be a Chiefs fan. We have the highest-paid quarterback in the league (rightly so as I believe he may be the greatest and most deserving of that paycheque). We have had recent success, that being two Super Bowl wins under the leadership of QB Patrick Mahomes.
I could go on and on about my love for the red and gold, but I won’t – today.
My husband is equally committed to the Cowboys and he is the type of fan who wears something blue and silver, every game day, all season long.
This bug, I also caught from him.
Predating my awakening from my Dallas Cowboys fan-by-proxy coma, my husband offered to buy me a jersey as a gift and asked what player number I would want.
I chose running back Lance Dunbar of the Cowboys because he was playing pretty well that season, if I recall correctly, and my maiden, which was still my legal name at that time, was also Dunbar.
Dunbar was not the obvious choice by anyone, other than me, and it was difficult for my husband to find the jersey.
For a while he let on that he just couldn’t get it, but he was lying. He had found the jersey but the shipping was extremely slow. After weeks of waiting, the order was suspiciously canceled by the store and my husband, then boyfriend, was returned the money he spent.
To make it even better, this was maybe two weeks before Christmas. I was none-the-wiser as he had been telling a little white lie.
He didn’t tell me about this until after that Christmas had passed.
This was only the first time my curse showed its ugly face to me.
As the love between my husband and I grew stronger, so did my love of sports watching. I know that was awfully cheesy, but true nonetheless.
Two baseball seasons back, a pitcher for the Blue Jays caught my eye. He was tall, lanky, and looked like he was going to trip and fall off the mound every time he sent a pitch over home plate. Ironically his name was Adam Cimber, which rhymes with timber – as in a tree falling over.
Again, he was not the obvious choice, but he became my new favourite. For two seasons my husband tried to track down a Cimber jersey, but he was never successful.
Although I will say, Cimber’s lacklustre performance this season has made me think I dodged a bullet.
And now we have arrived at the present day in my chronological ramblings – and I have yet again chosen a new favourite player. This time tight end Travis Kelce for the Kansas City Chiefs.
I have been a fan of his for a few seasons now, although learning my lesson with Cimber, I didn’t want to commit to a player too soon if you know what I mean.
The infatuation began as again we shared a name – this time my first name but with a different spelling. But he has shown that he is an integral part of the Chief’s offense and a major playmaker. I have thoroughly enjoyed the story of his rise to fame. The course notes are his brother Jason was drafted before him to the Eagles by coach Andy Reid. When Reid changed teams, he again drafted another member of that family, that being Travis.
The brothers had a second moment in the spotlight as they were the first brothers in NFL history to face off in a Super Bowl game last year.
The Chiefs went on to win that Super Bowl, and Travis had an even stronger spotlight on him as he had the chance to host Saturday Night Live. Most recently he is rumored to be dating singer/songwriter Taylor Swift.
Can you tell I’m a fan?
So again this year, I asked my husband for a jersey, this time number 87 Red and Gold Travis Kelce.
He took to the internet, sourced the goods, and had it shipped to our house. The package arrived last week. Guess what was inside?
A San Francisco 49ers shirt.
I was gutted and loudly proclaimed – “I am cursed.”
We don’t know what happened, or why I ended up with the wrong shirt, but Kelce’s recent rise to fame is now proving to make it difficult to find his shirts in stock.
I hope this isn’t foreshadowing of Kelce’s career – similar to the Cimber fiasco.
My husband and I had a good chuckle about this, especially the next day when he brought me home a bag of Doritos with Travis Kelce’s face on the bag.
When he showed me the bag of chips he told me, “Now you can’t say I haven’t got you anything with your favourite player on it.”
We enjoyed the snack while watching football last weekend. The Chiefs had a big win, and the Cowboys had a big loss.
Some sports fans are cursed to never make it past the first round in the postseason; others don’t live long enough to see a championship title; I myself am cursed to never own merchandise of my favourite player.
If I had a choice in the matter, I will happily keep my curse in order to see my team win.
I think I have only just now earned the title of a true sports fan.
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Kelsey Bent is a Midwestern Newspaper journalist. Comments or feedback can be sent to kbent@midwesternnewspapers.com.
