Parenting and Sports

This past weekend I went down to Orlando to watch my Alma mater (Buffalo) play at Central Florida. My wife and I had excellent seats. We were front row behind the Buffalo bench. For most of the game the UCF fans around me were shouting out player's numbers on UB trying to get their attention. If you're in college doing this, it's annoying, but at least you're heckling your peers. I'm not above it...I did it when I was in college.

So for most of the game I was listening to this go on. I was sitting front row so I didn't bother to see who it actually was behind me yelling until about the 3rd quarter when I got up to walk around. Directly behind me was a guy easily in his 40's with his young son next to him. The whole game he's blaming referees and also yelling at the players trying to get their attention. Even his little kid is yelling stuff at players and turning to his dad and proudly telling him that he thinks a player heard him. So a UB player goes up to the water cooler within an ear shot of us. He starts yelling at #93 about how much he sucks. #93 starts yelling back at him and then walks away. He actually turns to his son and gets a high five from him, congratulating himself on getting a player to yell back at him. Uncharacteristically, my wife turns to him and sarcastically congratulates him for getting under the skin of a 19 year old kid. The guy got flustered and said something about the Bills losing (because rooting for UB, automatically makes us Bills fan) and pretty much kept his mouth shut the rest of the game.

For the whole rest of the game I kept overhearing this guy's (quieter) interactions with his son and feeling bad the kid thinking about what an asshole he's going to be when he grows up.