Just a quick response to Nick Saban's most recent comments.

Are you stupid?

Have you lost all sense of reality?

This was a fucking football game.

9-11 and Pearl Harbor were national tragedies.

Big difference.

You could have put this any other way, used any other analogy to get your team ready.

But you didn't. 

Instead, in your arrogance, you decided to compare something that tramatic as national tragedies to something that really is unimportant to the day to day lives of people.

The thing is, I can't blame Saban entirely.

I blame the fans.

What has lead to that environment is that a culture of single minded fanaticism has developed at Alabama, which has subsequently given this jerk the freedom to mouth off.  I understand that he has the Freedom of Speech, which I am currently enjoying, but we also have things such as decency, candor, and discresion, none of which were used by Saban when he made his rant.

But this is a sort of a lack of perspective that reflects on certain fans at Alabama.  Not all of them, but those that take things too far, that leave For Sale signs on Coaches and Players' lawns, that send death threats to those that speak up, that will trash someone's property when they make a mistake or do a big play.  (And don't tell me that this doesn't go on.  I grew up in High School football country and I've seen the extremes fans go.  It's ugly and at times can make you lose faith in humanity.)

 Sports, in reality, is a small part of our lives.

Being a fan is great and all.  We get to root for our teams and follow them throughout the off-seasons and during the seasons.

All of us have jobs, families, friends, things that we go home too.  True, blogging and watching the Rangers play for me is fun, but at the end of the day, my world doesn't revolve around my team.  I am a huge fan, but in no means a zealot.

I have interests outside of my fanship with the Rangers, as I'm sure all of you do.  We go home or go out to spend time with those that we love, we go play pool, video games, watch movies or do other things, and have intelligent conversation about things other than sports.

We have lives.

Saban's remarks, however, reflect a sort of zealot-like devotion to the team, in which certain people live and die by their teams and their whole worlds revolve on when the next game is, when the next recruiting class is, and whether or not they sent their daily IM or Myspace comment to said recruit to get him to play for their school.

It's a reflection on the ugly side of sports, where our devoition to are teams becomes twisted and perverted into something ugly, something that can inevitably become dangerous.  It can cause those to lash out and results in people becoming unreasonable and lose their sense of perspective, as their obsession becomes their new reality, with not much left.

It's attitudes like that that lead to remarks like this getting published, that lead to people thinking that this shit is acceptable. 

This isn't a crack on fans.  It's merely a call to keep your sense of perspective.

Our teams are a part of us and our fan devotion is a part of who we are.

Just keep in mind, it is not the only thing that defines us.  And it shouldn't result in a culture where a coach can mouth off on topics that, in reality, have no business with being associated with things as relatively unimportant as sports.

And, with that in mind, when the Nick Sabans of the world try to convince us otherwise, that a loss isn't much more than what it is, we should be able to reprimand him as fans, by voicing our disgust and demand for him to exercise more candor the next time he approaches the mike.

I realize that this rant may be seen as hypocritical by some, might rile the anger of others, or even upset others by it's posting.

But all it is is simply a call for all of us to keep our devoition in perspective for the rest of the world. 

Love your teams.

Just don't let the love consume you.