I find myself living in a town that has, over the last couple of months, been hyper-afflicted with football frenzy. “Our” football team, that of the local university where I teach—okay, yes, the Ducks—is, at the moment of this writing, #1 in the nation and has been so since the tenth week of the season. Oh, wait, I stand corrected. Someone better informed than I has just told me that the Ducks have now slipped into #2 position, down from #1 by two thousands of a point.

I am not writing about this because I care; I am writing about this because I so deeply do not care.

How can I be so impervious? Even my mother on the East Coast has been impressed by the phenomenon and, on a recent Saturday when she could not get hold of me, assumed I must be at the game. (I was not.)

I could make a case against the amount of money that has been spent to create a winning team, money that could have been spent on other more worthy, cash-strapped programs at the university that serve greater numbers of students. But that is not my point here. My purpose is to explore why it is that I am so unmoved by the frenzy. How, in fact, it turns me off.

I don’t play football and have never understood the appeal of the game. But this isn’t entirely about football. I was equally as impervious when the soccer team of my high school won the Eastern Massachusetts state championship. They took us out of class for pep rallies, and I stood in the courtyard with my arms crossed, knee-socked and shivering in the chilly New England autumn, refusing to participate.

There was one brief period in my life when I was passionate about a sport. It was 1986 when I was living in New York and the Mets were on their way to winning the World Series. There was no escaping the fever. In every business, every taxi cab, every café and restaurant, people listened and watched and clapped and hooted. And I was right there along with everyone, hooting too. I cared. I learned about the game. I developed a crush on the catcher, Gary Carter. What I remember most vividly from that time is the magical intensity that pervaded the city, the ease of bonding with random strangers on the street over the shared love of a game. I felt part of the human family—yes, entangled—in the most wonderful and unexpected way. I wanted that state of jubilance and openness to last.

So what about now? In the course of this writing something has happened to me. I’ve suggested to myself a new approach. I think I can suppress my non-joiner DNA for a bit, if not to cheer, at least to remember the pleasure of rooting for a winning team, and to look more kindly on the cheering of others.