How My Sports Career and Parenthood Killed My Fandom: A Retrospective

One night last week I watched the third period of the Buffalo Sabres game because it was the last broadcast for their longtime broadcaster, Rick Jeanneret.  He's been with the team for 50 years, and his voice has narrated big moments for most of their history.  It was fitting that they won the game in overtime, which made his last goal call a big game-winning one.  They celebrated him a few weeks ago by raising his initials to the rafters with the retired numbers.  He's 79 years old and his retirement is well-earned.  Watching the highlight reels during both nights brought back a lot of memories of a very special time of my life.  My Sabres' fandom literally set the stage for the rest of my life.  It made me want to work in sports, which led to my Amerks internship, which is how I met Craig and got my first career.  It was such a passionate time and I feel sort of guilty that I haven't been an avid fan in years.  On one hand I miss it, and on the other I know that I don't have the emotional energy to be a fan right now.

The Sabres have been terrible for years.  They haven't made the playoffs for an NHL-record 11 seasons.  They haven't won a series since 2007, weeks before the Knighthawks won their first championship of the four during Craig's tenure.  It went from bad to downright embarrassing.  It stayed that way through a good chunk of this season, in fact, and it just started looking up near the end.  They finally traded the guy who was supposed to be the savior of the franchise who had been injured for a while, and somehow, a switch flipped.  They played very respectable hockey after that, and you could just see the team coming together and having some fun with it for the first time in ages.  It's brought a lot of hope to the fanbase, and Rick Jeanneret's retirement sort of rekindled all of those good memories and brought people back out of the woodwork.  I'll be honest, it was enough to make me vow to keep a closer eye on them next year.

How my fandom actually faded away is the result of multiple factors.  First, they made a number of personnel moves that alienated a lot of fans and made players hesitant to even play there, let alone play well as a team.  There were times where they'd lose and it would be like, "Well, sort of serves them right."  That also coincided with the departure of most of the players we knew from their time with the Amerks.  After that it was downright depressing to watch them and be disappointed all the time.  When life is already a bit stressful, which if you've been here for a while you know that's been our norm for a long time, adding sports to that just felt foolish (at least ones we didn't have a personal connection to).  Not only did sports' importance pale in comparison to the seriousness of what we were dealing with, but I didn't need the added stress and sadness.  So, over time I just stopped watching.  

I'm sure it didn't help that Craig was still working in sports and probably one of the last things he wanted to do at home to unwind was watch an organization that passed him over for a job and made a lot of questionable moves over the years.  We often watched what the kids wanted to while they were awake, and then once they were in bed we focused on our DVR recordings.  So, it just sort of fell off our radar.

After I left sports but before we had kids, I went to Amerks games whenever I felt like it.  It felt like something to do on weekend nights when Craig wasn't home, but on weekdays or Sundays when it was easier to just hang at home, I did.  Once I had Jacob, it was a way to get out of the house a bit, and when he ended up liking the games, sometimes it was the easiest way to get a well-behaved night out of him since that was the one time he usually sat still.  Where most kids (including Carter) want nothing more than to get up and walk during games, Jacob loved watching the games and sat transfixed.  But once there were two kids and Craig no longer worked for the Amerks, we stopped going.  And honestly, by that point I suppose that after working in sports for six years and going to games for probably five or six more, it was probably okay to spend time another way.  I was sort of an oddball fan anyway.  While I did still cheer on the Knighthawks pretty strongly, spending 40+ nights a year in the booth focused on work definitely tamped down my goal reactions and made me more focused on arena promotions and signage most of the time.  It just sort of changed my fan experience and I went to more of a casual observer than an actual fan.  I think, too, that once you've known guys on the team personally, watching a bunch of guys you don't know just feels different and less important.  It almost feels wrong to let it be as dominant as it once was, but I also feel weird not being enough of a fan.

Anyway, there's a part of me that misses it, even if I know it's not realistic anymore.  That was such a special, exciting time of my life that's chock full of memories that are core to the person I am today.  My kids may roll their eyes when I tell stories, but they don't really understand how all of the stories are part of a joyous time, and one that brought me to where I am today.  My fandom was special, and my time in sports was life changing and a dream come true in many ways--even if it was exhausting and eventually led to some of the burnout that drained my fandom.

Last weekend, the Amerks miraculously claimed the final AHL playoff spot for the season.  They needed to win and then have another team not get a single point in their last two games, and somehow it happened.  Craig and I both said right off the bat that we wanted to go to the one home playoff game for this series.  Not only has it been forever since we've been to one, but it's been a long time since any local hockey team has done anything of significance in the spring.  They hadn't won a playoff game since 2014 (per the internet), and they haven't won a series since 2005, which is when I still worked for the team.  I've been gone a long time--two lengthy careers spanning 16 years--and Craig left the Amerks back in 2011.  We haven't missed much, sadly.  But now that there was something to maybe get excited about, it felt like the thing to do.  So on Wednesday evening, off we went.

Being there brought back a ton of memories.  The building was fuller than I've seen it in years, especially for hockey.  The Knighthawks did a good job filling the building for their championships, but hockey and lacrosse crowds have severely dwindled since.  The Amerks' average attendance is now in the sad realm of what the small market teams did 20 years ago.  But the building was hopping that night and it brought back so many memories of passionate playoff crowds from my heyday.  

Mind you, games now are a significantly different experience.  Game production is a far cry from where it used to be--the scoreboard is fancier, there's a ribbon scoreboard at the one end of the arena, the promotions and PA announcers are different.  The music guy is still a holdout, and the building workers are familiar, but the rest of the staff is different.  The whole mood is different in the front office, too.  We were workhorses, driving ourselves nuts for 50+ hours a week, going weeks without days off, making terrible money, and we were all very close from going through so many ups and downs.  We were each others' social lives for the most part, stretching our energy further by going out hard after games.  It was the epitome of "work hard, play hard".  Now, everyone sort of does the bare minimum.  It's not unheard of to miss games, which we never did.  Craig watches it all go down and marvels at what they get away with now.  It's a different type of career these days...unless you're Craig, I guess.

 

The game didn't go so well, as the Amerks trailed 3-0 after two periods.  I was hopeful they'd get a goal since the crowd was so ready to explode.  Jacob was asking to leave by the beginning of the third period, but it's the playoffs!  Then the Amerks scored...and scored again...and then with four minutes left, they scored again.  Tie game!  Despite not being die-hards, I'll admit that the playoff nerves kicked in.  It's been so long since that was the case for hockey, so it was strange but oddly familiar.  I could feel the shakiness and elevated heart rate just like the old days, even if the stakes didn't feel as high as they did when we worked there and always had a good chance to win the Cup.  

The Amerks went to the Finals when I was an intern, but we lost in six games.  I will never forget standing at the fax machine sending out the scoresheet to the media, crying and listening to the other team celebrating on the other side of the wall.  You could smell the alcohol and the cigar smoke.  We had somewhat unexpected early exits three years in a row, and then two very exciting runs.  We had amazing comebacks, big OT wins, played games at the arena in Buffalo, traveled to Hamilton by limo, and partied a lot.  So many memories in those two years alone!  

Anyway, in the midst of all of that comeback, Carter got a puck!  It flew a row or so behind us and the guy who got it gave it to Carter.  Even though he wasn't a big hockey fan, he was so excited!  He was fascinated by how cold it was, that it was Made in Canada, and that it had chunks taken out of the rubber.

We were excited when the game went into overtime, but admittedly, it presented us with a dilemma.  The kids had school the next day and I had my biggest day of the year, our Day of Giving.  That's usually a 13-14 hour day at the office and the last thing I needed was a short night's sleep leading into that.  But it was playoff overtime and you can't leave in the midst of that!  But playoff overtime can also go on for a while, so that was concerning.  I knew we'd need to make the call sometime, but I just hoped the Amerks scored soon enough that it wasn't an issue!  

As a side note, our seats were pretty good!  Despite all this time in sports, it's not too often that I've sat down that low.  I don't love that I can't clearly see the other end of the ice, but that's what the scoreboard is for, right?  If nothing else, we had a great view of some massive checks!

And we also had a great view of the game-winning goal!  It was incredible that the Amerks completed the comeback, and it felt so amazing to see them win.  It definitely felt like old times!

And yes, we were rather tired the next morning (Jacob pretty much napped in the car on the way to school, and I came to work armed with caffeine), but I still think it was worth it.  Then tonight as I finished off this post, they won Game 2 in overtime again and took the series!  I'm so happy for them and hopeful that we might get a little more playoff action around here this spring.  It's long overdue.

Watching the Sabres' last game, being at the Amerks' game, and then hearing the winning goal tonight sometimes makes me think I want to be a fan again.  Subconsciously I wonder if I'm just trying to throw it back to a time in my life that was much simpler.  Realistically I doubt there's space in my life for fandom the way I feel like it should be, but part of me hopes I can try.  As bandwagon-ish as this sounds, if they win, it makes it way more fun and way easier to make space for it.  Even though parts of life are less stressful than they once were, admittedly I'm not sure I have the space yet to let myself get dragged down by that kind of disappointment if they don't continue to improve.  But if nothing else, I'll enjoy it while it lasts now.  Hockey is such a foundation of my life, and it brings back so many good memories.  And I'll take whatever good I can get right now.  The playoff game felt good, and I hope there's more to come.