Now that basketball season is upon us again, it is time for all those die-hard basketball fans to come out of their little hidey holes to cheer on their favorite team, be it a high school, college, professional or some other type of team.

Around Wichita, it seems most people are Shocker basketball fans, myself included. I love watching Shocker basketball, especially live in Koch Arena. However, some people like to take their love of the sport to an extreme.

Take my father, for instance. One night a few years ago, he was watching a KU basketball game (though I am hoping he will soon start watching more WSU for my sake) down in our basement while he was jogging on the treadmill. At some point, if memory serves me correctly, KU made a last-minute basket to win the game. Because of his excitement, my dad punched his fist upward as he yelled and cheered for the win. Since he was on the treadmill and close the ceiling, his fist went through the ceiling, and we had a marvelous hole in the ceiling of the basement for a few days that just looked utterly fantastic.

In addition, I cannot even watch basketball in the same room as my father and enjoy it. I can try, but every time I watch basketball with him, I have some difficulties hearing what’s going on in the game because he’s either cheering or booing loudly for something going on in the game, seemingly every second of the game. But, I digress.

Some people like to take their love of a sport to an extreme level. I have heard of instances in Europe where people start pulling out guns and threatening to hurt and/or kill one another because of something that happened during a soccer game. Really, people? You are going to hurt another human being because of something that happened in a game?

Another great example of taking love of a sport to an extreme level is with the reaction to the supposed “bad call” made by referees during the Sept. 24 football game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers. From what I understand, even the replacement referees could not make a call that was good enough for the fans of the Packers. I distinctly remember seeing everyone and their mom complaining on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr about the bad calls made by the referees and I was astounded by how much outrage it caused.

Really? We’re getting our hair in a knot over something that happened in a game? Why is that? I do not understand it at all.

I saw one great image on Facebook that had an awesome message about that incident. The image had a statement about something great another country had done and how meanwhile, in America, we were complaining over a bad call in a football game; this was about a week after the game had occurred. 

Anyway, back to my main point: sports are not something to completely freak out over. Newsflash: just because your favorite sports team lost one of their games does not mean the end of the world.

Losing a game is inevitable for any sports team, period. Once in a while, every sports team has to lose a game; otherwise I will go all John Munch on the sports field and say that a conspiracy has to be at work. Not only that, but losing one game every once in a while does not say that your team is going to lose every game after that. It just means that maybe they didn’t play as well as they could have, or the other team played harder than they did.

In closing, I am not trashing die-hard sports fans. I am a huge Shocker basketball fan, and I will always go and cheer them on at Koch Arena, if I ever have the time. Just do not take your love of sports to the extreme by doing outrageous actions that make you look like someone who only cares about winning, because in the end, sports are about having fun, not simply winning a game.