Blog #166: Mental Health and Watching Tense Sports Moments

Now, if there is one thing that many NFL fans will remember for the next six months is one of the wildest divisional playoff weekends in recent memory. It had to take three walk off field goals and one overtime to decide the final four contenders for next weekend’s conference championships.

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The hosts of FOX NFL Sunday from left to right, Curt Menefee, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Michael Strahan, Jimmy Johnson and Jay Glazer standing on their own personal “football field.”

But take away all of the excitement of the past weekend and put things in a different perspective. While the NFL and many sports for that matter can be exciting and anticipating, it can also be very draining for those with anxiety and other mental health conditions. Like a lot of NFL fans, I always get caught up in the game, rooting for teams that I want to win but end up not getting to do so.

There are two sides to a major sports event: the first is the buildup leading up to the game with all the “analysts” making predictions on who wins and loses. The second side is the game itself where you see things play out before your eyes seeing things come down to the wire and if the game goes into overtime/sudden death, it just increases the tension further and sometimes in the end, your favorite team doesn’t win.

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Former NFL on CBS and current sports talk host, Shannon “Mr. Ed” Sharpe

This brings us to the third side of a major sports event: the aftermath. Regardless of whether or not the team you want to win does or loses the game or event, you will hear about it over and over again for however long it takes. There are also some voices that you hear in the sports world that you probably never want to hear in a million years and one of the people that drove me nuts was Shannon Sharpe whom I often nicknamed “Mr. Ed” after the talking horse of the same name.

Mr. Ed the Talking Horse with Alan Young (Wilbur) on the set of “Mister Ed.”

“Mr. Ed, the Talking Horse”

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The late Pat Summerall and the late John “Mush Mouth” Madden (of whom my late paternal grandfather absolutely despised).

While all this brings excitement and drama to the sports fan, it can also be very bad for a person’s mental health. Sometimes I would take anxiety prevention medicine to get through the games because not all teams that I pick will end up winning. Furthermore, plenty of times the excitement for a particular sporting event can spill over into my day job.

For example, whenever the New England Patriots would make their way into the playoffs, I sometimes would work on days where there would be rabid Patriots fans getting their gameday snacks and this would result in having me go through a stressful day at work.

Plus, between you and me, I eventually got sick of the Patriots winning every single time.

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But I have invented a way to navigate around the anxiety of the real thing. For one thing, since 1999, I do my own personal NFL seasons on the Playstation platforms. First it was the NFL 2K series and then gradually transitioned to Madden NFL which I continue to use to this day.

Using this platform, I can do the games on my own time and in my own way. Plus, I keep track of the scores and statistics by writing them down in a notebook. One of these days, I plan to transition all the data I have collected onto this page so you can see how I do my “virtual” NFL seasons and why I sometimes prefer them over the real thing.

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Now, I know that there some of us in the neurodiversity/disability community that don’t even like sports of any kind to begin with. Sure, it’s entertaining for others, but it may not be entertaining for them. You cannot force others to do things they don’t want to do such as watching a particular sport. Maybe sports are not their thing and that’s okay.

When all is said and done, it’s just another boundary that you have to respect.

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Catch you all later!!

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