Back in our younger, more naive days, we asked a very good friend what we thought was a philosophical question with just two possible answers: Was the purpose of life to have fun and enjoy yourself, or was the purpose of life to try to “make a difference?” He thought about it for a little while and said something to the effect of, “the real purpose of life is to experience it.” That sticks with us to this day, so much so that we now turn the same type of question onto sports. Framed in the same way, we might ask: What is the ultimate goal as a sports fan: Is it to see a team win? Or is it to be entertained? And again, the answer is the same — it’s all about understanding “the experience.” It’s all of those things, and it’s dependent on circumstance, nuance and understanding the fine line between desperate and brilliant. And that directly relates to a couple of fun things going on right now.

First, Brett Favre. If you don’t want Brett Favre here, you’re wrong. You have to shed your dislike for the Packers. You have to shed your disdain for his personal narcissism and his comeback merry-go-round. You need to stop bringing up his injury because if he’s here, that means he’s healthy enough to play. You need to forget everything and think about the experience that this year could be. It would be unlike anything else. It would be Johnny Damon returns to Boston in pinstripes, times 10. It will create a crazy buzz surrounding your favorite football team. It already has players excited. Bernard Berrian is falling all over himself, and this thing isn’t even a done deal yet. If you are still caught up on Xs and Os, this move would WITHOUT A DOUBT make the Vikings a more dangerous team. We all know Favre is feast or famine, sometimes from one play to the next. But when he’s in the right situation, as this one is, the feast is worth it. As Mark Craig so ably pointed out today, Favre was a 71 percent passer and the Jets were 8-3 when he was healthy last year. He is far from washed up. He is the missing piece to this year’s Vikings experience. He will win and entertain. This needs to happen.

Second, Bill Simmons. The notion of him even being considered for the Wolves GM job that he is seriously lobbying for is, we know, the longest of long shots. But it is far from ridiculous. In fact, it makes a lot of sense. As Simmons said yesterday in the Q&A, “We have copious amounts of evidence that there is no correlation between succeeding as a college coach and succeeding as an NBA coach, or succeeding as an NBA player and succeeding as a GM, or succeeding the second time when you failed the first time. The job hinges on having common sense and a high basketball IQ.” Judging from the response to that post, the e-mails we’ve received, the work at Canis Hoopus, the fact that Kevin Love is Tweeting about this, the fact that the hire Bill Simmons as Wolves GM Facebook page (which we believe was started yesterday afternoon) now has more than 1,000 members (link fixed), the fact that Sassbottom, unprompted, made that excellent Simmons “Howl” poster … all of this tells us that there is genuine momentum for this from a group of fans eager for this experience. (Commenter Peter Christian: I would sell my house and live out of my car for a year to ensure that I had season tickets for the Wolves if they hired Simmons. I’m not joking.) Remember, this all started yesterday with Simmons on Twitter.

Fans might be irrational at times, but they’re not stupid. They know the difference between an idea that’s crazy bad and crazy good. The “experience” isn’t about creating a chaotic mess. It’s about unique opportunities that can mean winning, being a part of something and having fun at the same time. And that’s what sports, from a fan perspective, are all about.

Fasola-link! 50 great infographics.

P.S: We’ll have some choice stuff coming later, including Stu’s Hunt Down.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 7:21 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.