I Just Hope Both Teams Lose
Somewhere around my mid-20s, I was really into karaoke. It was pretty much a Sunday through Thursday thing, and went well into the night, every night, because what self-respecting twenty-something needs more than three hours of sleep? Well, when you live this lifestyle, you find yourself at the same places most nights, surrounded by the same people most nights, and you develop some pretty intransigent opinions about those people over time.
Some of these opinions are positive. There are certainly those whose company and conversation you enjoy, or at least tolerate. Then there were the two Johns. Young John was about my age and an unapologetic white supremacist. Sailor John was about 50 and a raging alcoholic, at the risk of being the pot calling the kettle black, and the type that would aggressively demand you sing whatever song he wanted you to for the price of a cheap shot of swill. Sailor John was probably not a bad dude other than that, but his poor karaoke social graces coupled with acute halitosis made him torture to be around. I didn’t like either guy and tried my best to avoid interacting with them whenever possible.
They also didn’t like each other. This generally didn’t manifest into much until one random weeknight in Winter. I only remember the season because the cold was biting enough by Southern California standards that even the heavy smokers avoided the outside patio like the plague. I don’t know who started it, but all of a sudden a bit of commotion stirs and I look up to see them swinging on each other by the fire pit. There are only two other people outside - neither of whom had any observable interest in breaking it up.
There’s something amusing about watching two people with limited fighting chops duking it out, but all I can remember thinking is, “God, let them please knock each other out cold into the fire pit.”
Why do I tell you this?
The Devil Versus His Inheritor
As a die hard lifelong Rams fan, there is no team I hate more than the 49rs. But over recent years, the Seahawks have made it a photo finish. Some of this is due to the division rivalry stuff, some of it is the insufferability of some of their fans on Twitter. I couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, I can only tell you that it’s real.
There are moments in sports fandom that don’t get enough respect. Moments that don’t involve your team winning, or even your team playing. Moments where joy doesn’t come from success, but from the potential failure of others.
Yesterday was one of those moments.
As a Rams fan, I found myself watching the Seahawks and the 49ers play a football game that technically counted in the win-or-go-home NFL playoffs, but spiritually felt like a hostage situation. The kind of game where you keep checking the clock, hoping someone does something illegal enough to get the whole thing shut down.
I couldn’t escape this simple, pure, unmistakable, yet theoretically impossible thought:
There has to be a way for both of you to lose.
This is not hatred in the cartoon sense. I don’t want bad things to happen to the players as people. I don’t want careers ended. I don’t want injuries. I want something far more refined. Far more adult.
I want consequences.
I want a game so ugly, so spiritually bankrupt, that the league office has to step in afterward and say, “You know what? No. Nobody gets this one.”
This is the kind of emotion you only understand if you’ve been marinating in a division rivalry for long enough that logic has abandoned the building. The Seahawks and the 49ers aren’t just teams the Rams play. They’re recurring irritants. They’re neighbors who borrow your tools and return them broken. They’re the guy who cuts you off in traffic and then slows down. They’re the people who clap when the plane lands.
So when they play each other, the usual fan math breaks down. You’re supposed to root for whichever outcome helps your team more in the standings. You’re supposed to be pragmatic. Strategic. Mature. Or you just don’t care enough. But this is the playoffs, and if you’re lucky enough to progress past your own match, you need to play against one of these teams.
In this scenario though, there is no emotionally satisfying outcome where one of them wins. One team winning means smugness. The other losing means excuses. And both outcomes are intolerable.
What you really want is chaos.
You want a game where:
Both quarterbacks look miserable
Both fanbases end up needing blood pressure medication
The announcers start saying things like “that was a penalty, and probably illegal in 37 states”
Nobody leaves feeling good about what they just watched
You start rooting for dropped interceptions. Missed field goals. Delay-of-game penalties after timeouts. You don’t even care who commits them — you just want the game to feel bad.
There’s a very specific flavor of schadenfreude that only division rivals can provide. It’s not the joy of dominance. It’s the joy of shared discomfort. The hope that both teams walk away thinking, “We won, but… do we actually suck?”
This is why ties should be more common, by the way. Not because they’re fair, but because they’re emotionally perfect. Nobody celebrates a tie. Nobody feels accomplished. Everyone goes home unsettled. That’s a gift.
But since ties are rare, you improvise. You root for overtime. Then double overtime. You root for weather. You root for referees to make everything feel slightly off. You root for the postgame discourse to be unbearable.
You start fantasizing about outcomes that defy the realm of reality.
This is not pettiness. This is earned resentment. Years of divisional nonsense distilled into a single Sunday afternoon.
And here’s the thing — this feeling isn’t unique to Rams fans. It exists everywhere.
Packers fans watching Bears–Vikings. Yankees fans watching Red Sox–Astros. Spurs fans watching Arsenal and Chelsea trip over each other. The desire for mutual failure is universal. It’s the dark matter of sports fandom. Invisible, but holding everything together.
Because at the end of the day, sports aren’t just about loving your team. They’re about knowing exactly who you’d prefer to see miserable — and being honest about it.
So yes. I watched Seahawks–49ers yesterday. And no, I didn’t care who won. In fact, it was evident by the second quarter that the Seahawks were going to massacre the Niners, and that’s how it ended.
I’d have preferred they still be playing, in fact, in maybe the 27th or 28th overtime. Alas, here we are.
But you know what? I enjoyed watching it, because while only half of the participants ended up miserable, that’s half more than were miserable when the game started. And honestly? That’s the healthiest place a rival fan can be.
No, both teams cannnot lose, it turns out. But one can, while I win as a fan, and that’s gotta be good enough.
Torsten / 120 Proof Ball
Proof that the internet was a mistake.
