A lot of talk has been circulating regarding the hypocrisy that is what I'd like to call "sports geekery". My friend Fausto linked to a video giving its treatise on the subject here. It's toward the end of the post. It'll be worth a watch.

Let me just say this: I am an avid Pittsburgh Steelers fan and Los Angeles Angels supporter, so I've witnessed what the state of sports fandom has become.

With the advent of fantasy football, sports statistics and miscellany have become more prominent than ever before. It tends to get a little bit irritating. In my first year of college, I was called a "geek" and a "vidiot" for my devotion to video games and the knowledge thereof, yet my suite mates prattled on about how many yards LaDainian Tomlinson got this weekend or whether they should start Peyton Manning or Donovan McNabb. Honestly, dudes, you're wasting just as much time as I am, and accomplishing absolutely nothing, as I am. I do participate in Fantasy Football, but in all honesty I'm not a very big fan of it. I was raised to be a Steelers fan, and let me tell you, it hurt my soul to have to rely on Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys or Corey Dillon of the New England Patriots to help me win. I hate both of those teams.

But it's not just the hypocrisy of it all. What really gets to me is the cowardice that comes with being a casual fan and fantasy football player. Those who only jump into the world of football to play FF tend to do what many sports fans consider blasphemy - jump bandwagons. As people draft their players and such, they start to become more "neutral", and they get to pick and choose which teams they root for. Sure, they'll do the noble thing and root for the underdog most of the time, but occasionally they'll root for a team that everyone hates just because they're doing something that hasn't been done before. Take, for example, Super Bowl XLII, in which the undefeated Patriots battled the underdog New York Giants. Out of 7 people, only 2 rooted for the Giants. Those people were my buddy Anurag and I, who were both pretty hardcore fans of our respective teams. We each saw our teams win a Super Bowl in succession, the Steelers winning SBXL and the Colts winning SBXLI. We both felt the anguish at seeing our teams lose to the hated Patriots, with their overexposed, oft-fellated by the media quarterback and slap-on-the-wrist punishment for cheating their way to an undefeated season. The Giants had been abandoned by their star running back a year before, and their aging star defensive end was months away from retiring. Well, geez, I digress. Long story short, the rest of my chums wanted to witness a completed undefeated season, no matter how shady the character of that accomplishment would be, simply because the Patriots' players had proven to be studs in the fantasy world. They, much like the media does on a daily basis, had sided with the guys who have proven they can win.

"But Martin! Be fair, be just! There's no need to needlessly hate an entire organization just because of a few little accusations! HGH use, videotaping, I'm sure everyone does it!" Well, my friend, as any Oakland Raiders or Cleveland Browns fan can tell you, it's not up to the fans to be fair and just to other teams. Leave sportsmanship to the sportsmen, and leave the FANATICISM to the FANATICS, or, for short, FANS! It's up to the fans of one team to make the other team miserable. It's the way sports have been for decades.

So if you're a sports fan, BE A SPORTS FAN! Don't devolve into the statistics-quoting, fence-standing morons that pretend to root for an organization then proceed to root for the teams that you absolutely should not like. Choose your team! Make them feel loved! Make the rest feel like utter garbage! It's the way sports are supposed to be, darn it!

HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO!

(By the way, get used to rants like these, but don't expect them all the time.)

Also, E3 in two days! C'mon, new Mario game!