Huzzah, another Alexander Isak article, but don’t worry…

Rationality and the football fan.

Huzzah, another Alexander Isak article.

Don’t worry, he’s just the jumping-off point.

As is my wont, I’m going to use a topical reference point to set off on a ramble about a wider subject.

Alexander Isak has a broken leg and this has made some Newcastle United fans happy.

Some Newcastle United fans don’t agree that the happy Newcastle United fans should be happy about Isak’s injury, or at least that they shouldn’t be revelling in it.

I can see both sides of the argument. I’m going to try to explain – and justify – my position.

Human beings, while being conscious, and having intelligence [quiet at the back] and the power to reason, are not always rational.

I have a real problem with the old phrase ‘Never judge a book by the cover.’ We SHOULD judge a book by the cover; it’s one thing our brains are fantastic at: making snap judgments and reacting to them. Many animal brains have evolved to benefit from instinctive, snap judgments, and our brains continue to be excellent pattern-spotters. It’s a major reason why we are still here. It’s a major reason why we [and our forebears] didn’t go extinct.

However, given our intelligence, initial snap judgments often lead to failures in engaging with the higher levels of thought that society demands of our decision-making.

Reading Stuart Sutherland’s excellent ‘Irrationality: The Enemy Within’ [highly recommended, as is his ‘recommended reading list’ at the end of the book] helped me to realise this, and to at least acknowledge my own irrationality. It’s fascinating once you start thinking ‘why do I think that?’, ‘why do I do it like that?’, ‘why is that person doing/saying/shouting that?’, ‘is there another, better way?’.

Taken to an extreme, being a football fan is definitely NOT rational. Obviously, we need our recreation time, we need entertainment in our lives, hobbies, even if it’s no more than something to focus on so we aren’t thinking about all the things we really don’t want to think about. Pinning your emotions [to whatever extent] on an entity over which one has really very little control doesn’t make much sense in the cold light of day.

Following that thought process, I allow myself to be irrational in my dealing with football. For example, I KNOW I am a stubborn man. In real life, I do my best to keep this from being a problem, by being aware of it, and making sure it doesn’t negatively impact my decision-making. I refuse to take any such precautions when it comes to my dealings with football.

Football has made me laugh, cry, lose my voice, the plot, hours, weeks, months, years of my life, hundreds, thousands of pounds. Football has made me argue with friends and dance with strangers. Football is beautiful, meaningful, meaningless nonsense. Football is art and at times artless.

I still hold a grudge against Lee Dixon for the League Cup match at Highbury almost 31 years ago. My feelings about a certain Scottish former Premier League manager and his thuggish captain would get some concerned looks if spoken in polite society. And that’s before we get started on THAT LOT, natch.

The comments section of many an article on The Mag can become a ‘Who can be the most rational’ competition. While I am happy that some people are able to, and I applaud them for it, I genuinely can’t imagine engaging with football in a rational manner.

So, although I know it’s irrational, and not very nice, to enjoy the schadenfreude of Isak’s injury, [and, for example, write lyrics based on Toni Basil’s ‘Hey Mickey’ as an ode to Mickey van den Ven], I just am. I’m not going to take issue with anyone pointing out the nastiness of my stance, because the rational part of me totally gets it. But I allow myself to be irrational when it comes to football. A very weak moral stance, I agree. There are a million arguments to be made against it.

But it’s FOOTBALL. Enjoying it irrationally is the only way I can enjoy it. And that’s that.