After All It's Just A Game

(Ed. Note: The following article uses numerous terms that make us at The Differ evacuate our bowels. Please forgive their use and refer to Frequently Despised Sports Terms to determine which ones made us change our britches.)

The Differ is different (clever, no?). Here we look at the sports world’s consensus and conventions and argue the opposite. Many times this will seem like a case of being contrary simply to be contrary. It’s not. The truth is the consensus is frequently right. We are contrary to help open a discussion. Usually more than one side to every story exists. We will attempt to show as many sides as we find interesting. Most times, we will not even agree amongst ourselves.

Blogs exist primarily to fan the flames of popularity and pack mentality. This fanning creates hysteria (see “Spygate”) and closed-mindedness (see John Amaechi). Blogs teach us to forget about having an opinion different than the Internet because you will be ridiculed, no matter how strong your case is.

Our goal at The Differ is to escape the mob mentality of the blogosphere. This is not being negative just to be negative. This is being negative to provide a well-reasoned opposing point-of-view. You don’t see the difference there? Okay, we’ll show you, probably.

Here are a few rules that we vow to follow. However we, like Kobe, cannot be expected to follow all of our rules:

-The Differ will not hero-worship. Athletes are just that, athletes. They are not role models, they are not superhuman, we should not expect more from them than we expect from everyone else.
-The Differ will not “gossip-ify” athletes. Athlete gossip is just an extension of hero worship. We commoners simply want to see that our heroes are just like us, right? Or we want to bring them down to our level, right?
-The Differ will, however, show that in sports nothing is sacred. They are, after all, just games.
-The Differ will acknowledge the value and reality of the emotion and bias of fans.
-The Differ will avoid YELLING our arguments.
-Personal attacks will be off-limits at The Differ, unless the attacked has an opportunity to counter.
-Once a point is proven, The Differ will not beat a dead horse. The horse will simply be buried under the racetrack.
-The Differ will always wonder if John Amaechi is still relevant.
-The Differ is a fan of open, well-reasoned discussion. If you don’t agree with us, great, argue your point.

Here are a few features to expect from us soon:
-“Pantheon of Sport” where we will help Webster’s properly define sport.
-“Beg the Differ” where we will show that we can’t even agree amongst ourselves.
-“Frequently Despised Sports Terms” less a feature column and more a reference tool for expressing our disgust (we do that a lot here) for overused terms.