One Fan's Season of Promise Turns Into a Nightmare

It’s been a month and three days since that last pitiful loss, the shellacking taken from Yale that made it 10 straight defeats, the final nail in the light blue coffin that encases my Columbia heart.

For weeks, the images kept replaying themselves.

As I sat in a stupor in the back of astronomy class: the crushing swish of the tie-breaking, buzzer-beating, 18-foot heave by Brown’s point guard, Jason Forte.

As I lay in bed, twisting and turning between the sheets: Matt Land calling a timeout the Lions didn’t have, killing a last-minute comeback against Princeton.

And as I longingly watched that other team in Columbia blue win the national championship this week: Penn’s scraggy shrimp of a shooting guard, “Ibby” Jaaber, dunking over a hapless, helpless Lion frontcourt.

I’m starting to get over the big letdown—I’m starting to sleep again. Spring’s here, and the Yanks just took two out of three from the Red Sox. And the once-swollen expectations of a great Columbia basketball team, puffed up by heady early-season wins over Morehead State and Sacred Heart, seem quaint now, not crushing.

But while the pain lasted, oh, how it burned.

You see, there’s one salient thing about me, once you get past the colorblindness and the severe lactose intolerance—both of which, for some reason, have become the source of innumerable jokes among my friends. The salient thing is my hatred—my utter, all-consuming contempt—of losing.

This trait, as all who know me know, isn’t a laughing matter. I’m cold-blooded about winning. I’m merciless, too. Want to compete with me? Don’t expect to beat me, because I’m bringing every ounce of my A game. And if you do somehow manage to pull off the upset, I won’t slither away in defeat—I’ll come right back at you with excuses, explanations of how luck was on your side, and incessant demands for a rematch.

Doesn’t matter if it’s bowling or Mario Kart or wastepaper basketball. Or, for that matter, Ivy League basketball. I need to win.

Usually, I’m so passionate about it that I simply eliminate the possibility of any other outcome. So, rather than just playing Scrabble, I memorized all 96 two-letter words and all 16 q-without-u words (qintar, anyone?). And when my buddy and I recently took up chess, I headed to the bookstore to study up on the Queen’s Gambit Accepted and the Petrov Defense. On both boards, I’ve been undefeated ever since.

You’re laughing or scoffing—but admit it, you’re the same way. We all are. How do you think we made it to Columbia? We won the game where nine out of 10 contestants are losers. We were bred to get straight A’s, to “attain leadership positions,” and to show off our winning personalities. Losing’s failing; we’re victors, not failures.

And so, armed with humility, I threw myself into Columbia basketball fandom this season. I was certain it would be just like Scrabble or college admissions—I’d will the team to victory. As Spectator’s back page reminded me every other day, Joe Jones took us from no Ivy wins to six—after losing the team’s two leading scorers. Surely, my devoted rooting would help turn that six into 12.

So what if I wasn’t on the court? I did everything a fan is supposed to do and more. Obviously, I went to every game. I always showed up 30 minutes early so I could get the same seat (five rows up, just past midcourt). When I saw Matt Preston or coach Jones around campus, I solicitously wished them good luck. I brought friends and family from places as far away as New Jersey to help cheer them on. I was a Midnight Maniac. A Sixth Man. A blond-haired, blue-eyed, Mass-attending Jew for Jones. I even developed a lucky light blue shirt, which I only washed after losses.

By the end, I was doing a lot of laundry.

But in the beginning, when my equally obsessed girlfriend and I were murmuring “Ivy title” as if it were some forbidden erotic pleasure, it was fun to dream. And the best thing about it: there were hoards of others dreaming with us. We conjured up some school spirit and we learned how to pronounce “Nwachukwu.” We razzed the refs and roared the fight song and chanted “Ste-ven! Urk-el!” when his lookalike, Yale’s Edwin Draughan, came to town.

But then, of course, reality hit, and the team got bad again. And when the clock expired on the final home loss against Penn, we all milled on the Levien bleachers and looked around at each other, shamefaced. Even decades of bad Columbia basketball hasn’t quite taught us to accept it: we’re losers. Disgraceful, odious losers.

The season of dreams deferred prompted countless columns, just like this one, mourning it all: the great expectations, the agony of defeat, the noble fans with all their futile spirit. We’re not accustomed to being losers, so we make the usual round of irrelevant excuses: Columbia basketball could improve if only we had athletic scholarships/a new gym/more administrative support/a postseason tournament.

But, as I said, we get over it eventually. At least I did. Yesterday was the first day in a long time I didn’t even think about Columbia basketball. It was a busy day: I aced a midterm I didn’t study for, I schmoozed an administrator into doing me a favor, I confirmed the start date for my summer internship, and I applied to be a senior marshal.

Who said anything about losing?

Diehard Columbia sports fan James Romoser was Spectator’s managing editor on the 128th Managing Board and news editor on the 127th Managing Board. Send any comments to sports@columbiaspectator.com