This week I want to take a brief step away from the usual political discourse, away from the wars, the inflation, the border, the debt, and other looming disasters.  Instead, I want to explore just why we put so much time and effort into supporting one sports team or another.  When my late grandfather observed someone who was obsessed with something he would say, “It’s a sickness.”  Of course, when he said it it came out sick-i-ness, but you get the point.  Last year, Americans spent over $100 billion to go to sporting events. Americans tend to work more than people in other countries, so our leisure time is at a premium.  That being the case, why do we spend so much time, money, and energy rooting for sports teams?  It can’t be for the satisfaction of seeing one’s team win because some of the most rabid supporters are rooting for incredibly bad teams.  Take it from me.  I root for the New York Giants and the Mets, and this has not been a satisfying year.  Yet we keep coming back.  Case in point.  Last Sunday I went to the Giants-Jets game.  The weather was miserable, and both teams have been putrid all year.  Game tickets on the secondary market were going for a minimum of $250 to $300 apiece for average seats.  Torrential downpours moved the pregame tailgate under a makeshift tent.  It didn’t matter.  We were happy to be there.  Then there was the game.  We were treated to the worst excuse for professional football I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been watching for 60 years.  It doesn’t matter.  This Sunday, I’ll watch them again.  I can’t help it.  The best thing I can compare it to is going by the scene of an auto crash.  You know it’s going to be terrible, but you have to look.  What’s driving our mania?  We’re just fans.  The origin of the term “fan” to describe a sports team supporter is uncertain.  It’s likely derived from the word “fanatic.”  Fanatic comes to us from the Latin “fanaticus,” which meant mad, enthusiastic, or inspired by a god.  In the 1520’s, “fanatic” was used to describe an insane person.  That seems about right.  In the 17th century, “fanatic” was used to describe an avid enthusiast or a devoted follower.  The shortening of the word to “fan” dates to the 1880’s and has been attributed to baseball manager Ted Sullivan, and Cincinnati sportswriter Ren Mulford.  Wherever “fan” came from, you get the point.  Fan, fanatic, insane – OK, we’re all nuts.  We have to be crazy.  Whether he actually said it or not, Albert Einstein is credited with the saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”  I’ll be watching the Giants again this week, so score one for Einstein.  And it’s not just the time we spend at the game or watching the game.  Every waking minute between the end of one game and the beginning of the next is consumed with talking about, complaining about, and reliving the game.  As I said, the teams most often lose, and even when they win, victory is fleeting, but we rehash it over and over again.  And the media outlets are fanning the flames.  Back in the dark ages, before 24/7 cable TV, you might see an article about the game in a newspaper.  There was no ESPN, so you saw NFL highlights, if at all, at halftime during Monday Night Football.  Now you can’t escape from pregame and post-game analysis.  I can turn my TV on on a Saturday and watch dozens of college football games, some from colleges I never heard of.  Then there’s Thursday night football and Monday night football.  On Sunday, there are live network games and RedZone, which broadcasts the best parts of all live games.  For a price, you can watch every game.  And when the games are over, there’s Sports Talk radio, which will harp and harp on the same stupid crap all day and all night.  And we’ll listen all day and all night because we’re fans.  Winston Churchill said, “A fan is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”  Turn on WFAN radio any day and you’ll see Churchill was right.  We’re gluttons for punishment too, because the commentators and the callers invariably are not extolling the accomplishments of our teams, but instead are dissecting their failures, ad infinitum, and we revel in it.  I’ve come to the conclusion that we don’t watch sports to experience what Jim McKay used to call the thrill of victory.  We watch them so we can bitch about the agony of defeat.  Sports are a diversion from the horrors of reality.  We have to bitch about something, so it might as well be about the latest sporting contest, the result of which, in the final analysis, is irrelevant.  As my grandfather observed, “It’s a sickness.”  Let’s hope we never recover.