This is my column in today’s Herald-Dispatch.  My hometown newspaper in Huntington, WV!

https://www.herald-dispatch.com/opinion/edwin-leap-don-t-worry-you-won-t-lose-your/article_3706dd19-3472-520d-856d-09e3580d3886.html

It’s a terrible confession to make as a Southern male, but here it goes. I don’t care a lick about sports; not leagues, not high school, not college not pro. It feels liberating to say so. I figured I might as well be honest about it, because I’m forever confronting the reality of my sports-impairment in various and sundry ways.
One way my dilemma arises is I’m standing in the check-out line at a store, wearing my WVU t-shirt when another customer asks what I think of the Mountaineer’s chances this year. I usually make some sort of generally non-committal remark about how ‘I sure HOPE they do better this year!’ Which means that at some point in the distant future, if they manage to win a championship, I’ll have to be more careful and say ‘well, if LAST year was any indication this should be a good one!’ I try not to make eye-contact. It’s too uncomfortable.
What I usually want to explain, but never bother, is that I wear the shirt because I grew up and went to school there. And it was awesome and I have wonderful memories (same reason I wear my Marshall shirt). But it’s hard to stop a die-hard sports fan and say, ‘well, the truth is I really didn’t have time for sports because I was studying a great deal, but I’m proud I graduated!’ That makes people go to the next checkout line and shake their heads.
I’ve noticed the same thing at church. I remember finding myself in deacon’s meetings with little to contribute to the discussion at zero dark thirty Sunday morning. As everyone made the rounds of the previous day’s games, it was ‘Ed, Marshall did well yesterday didn’t they!’ ‘Sure did…(I guess).’ I put my head down, ate my biscuits and gravy and (since I live in South Carolina) I just let the orange or garnet wave pass over.


I’m not trying to be a snob, please understand. In my childhood I just wasn’t formally taught anything about athletics. Admittedly, my dad built a basketball court for me in the back yard. All the neighborhood kids and I had a great time there at all hours of the day and evening. But the rules were not exactly formally enforced. It was as much social time as athleticism. I also learned a little about football in the front yard. Specifically, I learned that ‘touch’ can be widely interpreted. I realized that lying on my back gasping for air one day, looking up at the fading blue sky.
I remember once around sixth or seventh grade that I went to the mother of one of my more athletically inclined friends and asked about joining a basketball league. She was kind, in a ‘bless your heart’ sort of way, and said we might be able to cram on the rules but it wasn’t looking good. Age 12 and I was already too old to start. I got the message and moved on without looking back.
Instead I filled my days with walks in the woods, turning over rocks in the creek for crawdads, seining for minnows, riding horses with my grandfather, shooting arrows into bales of straw, carrying my BB gun everywhere, shooting bigger guns whenever the opportunity afforded itself and generally acting like a joyous junior barbarian. Those became my preferred activities, until I discovered martial arts, then girlfriend, in high school.
My wife Jan grew up with brothers playing football. If I don’t understand a game that’s on, I just ask her and she guides me through. Two of my children attend Clemson University, and the other two are also fans, which is great. But they didn’t get it from me. Just recently they were all talking about the season and daughter Elysa said, with surprise, ‘why look at us, talking about sports like a normal family!’
I have great respect for all those devoted to their teams, who can quote stats like chapter and verse of scripture. May your team get all of the touchdowns, field-goals, runs and everything else it needs. But to all those who never got it, who never fell in love with sports, it’s alright. You aren’t alone.
Do your thing. You aren’t less of a Southerner or less of a man. And when the discussion turns to yesterday’s contest, learn to smile, nod and just say this: ‘that was some game!’

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