We’ve all been there. You were looking forward to a weekend,
you’ve possibly even seen some friends,
had a fun time; but then a few sports results go the wrong way and all of
sudden you’re a bit miserable. If it’s a big, important event, or a match
against a rival, then you might even be angry and upset. You get a bit snappy
with people and despite the nice weather or the good company, your weekend is
still not all it should be. Before too long someone who doesn’t quite understand
why you’ve got such a cob on says the four words that make you seethe: “it’s
only a game”. Well, yes, in the grand scheme of things it is. Nothing truly earth-shattering
or life-threatening has occurred, but you know you still feel bad and probably
wish you didn’t. You also know that some days you’ll be buzzing and euphoric
when the wins roll in, but just how much do some things matter and how happy
(or sad) should you be after the weekend’s fixtures are complete?
For a while I had been thinking about quantifying the impact
of sports results on my mood so I decided to do something to do just that. In
my view, there’s almost nothing that isn’t made better by a spreadsheet, and
this project had ‘spreadsheet’ written all over it.
The concept is (relatively) simple: I identify all the teams
(and in some cases, individuals) that I have a vested interest in when it comes
to sport and give them a value out of 10 depending on how much I care. This is
the fan factor. I identify all the potential
competitions that they could participate in, and score them out of 10 as well;
because we all know that some events and tournaments mean more than others.
Each week I list eight of my chosen allegiances who have been in action, select
the competition, log the result (win, draw, lose) and then state whether the
match was a derby/rivalry or if it
was a match of special significance e.g. key in a relegation battle, securing a
title or keeping a winning streak etc etc. These two factors can have an impact
on how you feel about any given result.
However, it’s not just about the teams I like. I recognise
that sometimes the difference between a bad weekend and a terrible one can be
the results of rivals; so there’s scope for two rivals’ results to be logged.
If they lose, my score goes up.
The combination of allegiances, competition, result,
derby/rivalry, special significance and rival’s results then create a score
which quantifies my mood and gives me my ‘Happiness Index’. Depending on what
score I get, I receive a message describing how I should be feeling in the ‘Mood
Box’.
I built this gizmo a while ago and have now been logging
results for a year. Each week my happiness Index is charted on a line graph
which shows the peaks and troughs of being a sports fan.
So what allegiances have I got in my tracker, and how do I
rate them? The following is probably not 100% exhaustive, but pretty much
covers all those that I can claim to have any impact on mood at any given time.
And the tournaments I have identified for these, and their
(importance factor) are as follows:
The combination of result with these two levels of factor
(fan and competition importance) coupled with the same calculation (but inverse
obviously so losses score heavier) for the two rivals gives the final Happiness Index.
This last weekend (1/2 April 2017) saw several of my
allegiances in action. The ones I’ve tracked are, in no particular order:
Wellington Hurricanes (Super
Rugby) bt Queensland Reds
Wigan Warriors (Superleague) lost
to Leeds Rhinos
Philadelphia Flyers (NHL) lost to
New Jersey Devils
Tottenham Hotspur (Premier
League) bt Burnley
Essendon Bombers (AFL) bt
Brisbane Lions
Maidstone United (National
League) bt Barrow
Milan (Serie A) drew with Pescara
St George/Illawarra Dragons (NRL)
bt Wests Tigers
In summary these results delivered the following:
The rivals I selected to counterbalance and revel in their misfortune
are:
Arsenal (rival to Tottenham) drew
with Manchester City
St Helens (rival to Wigan) lost
to Salford
So, what was the overall impact on my mood when all of these
results were considered? Well according to my Sports Fans’ Happiness Index
Tracker I should be pretty pleased with myself this Monday:
This certainly doesn’t represent a high-point in my sports
related mood, but there were still some things worth celebrating.
I’m going to try and keep a track for the coming year and
report on whether the tracker really is a true reflection of how I feel after the
weekend, or whether I’ve managed to rise above the disappointment or sink lower
into an abyss. That said, I haven’t written anything on here for 6 years (and I
still haven’t finished my BLSU Darts retrospective – plenty to say on that), so
perhaps this might be the beginning and end of the experiment. We shall see!
