The Entropy.
Have you felt it yet?
The slow bubbling anxiety that comes with the college sports era we’re living through. The sensation of routine disarray. The entropy.
I spent two years as a substitute teacher, and every day I worked, I did the same thing. I wore the same clothes. I drove the same car. I gave the same speech introducing myself. I told the same jokes. Copy and paste. Rinse and Repeat.
But every day was also different. The desks changed. The students changed. The people I met yesterday were not the people I met today. My jokes were the same, but the audience changed (which is why they always worked). The desk I sat at was different every day, and finding the all-important sub-note was always a scavenger hunt. I spent as much energy fighting for tomorrow’s job as I did doing my current one. As much time trying to meet the people I’ll need tomorrow as building relationships with the people I needed today. After two years of it, I took a job at OfficeMax just for the sake of consistency.
Dishevelment as a way of life isn’t unique to substitute teaching; indeed, college sports has progressed far down this path, and I ask if you’ve also sensed how much closer we’ve come to its inevitable destination?
My complaints are as trite as they are substantial. Roster turnover. Conference realignment. They’ll dim with proximity to real, actual games. Though as we’ve shed our shotgun marriage with the MWC, I wonder if the transparently arbitrary nature of the schedule will make even actual games a bit less… iridescent.
A game at Ole’ Miss means fun! But a game at Virginia means…well, I don’t know.
Which is exactly what entropy is. A slow decline of order and predictability, ultimately leading to a vapid chaos. A state of being equally defined by unpredictability and a listlessness about that fact.
We forget how important consistency can be until we have to report to work at a new building, with a new desk, again. and again. and again, and again.
Until we turn up for a game in September, and it’s somehow the Apple Cup.
At the cost of good writing, I feel the need to add a coda. I am not hopeless. In fact, I am genuinely curious about Cougar football this season. New coaching staff. New culture. New scheme.
It’s easy to become nihilistic in the face of intractable problems, and can even make you feel smart to do so. I think the true genius lies in finding ways to be optimistic anyway.
So why write this piece? Because naming something is a part of coping with it. Because optimism shouldn’t be confused with relentless positivity. Because I find hope in writing, and I’ve gotten the sense that a few of you find a bit of catharsis in reading what I write.
With spring in the rear view, and a bit of a disposable football season off in the distance, I wanted to name the elephant in the room one more time in the hope of finding meaning around the margins of this season in purgatory.
I trust we’ll find it.