For starters, let me just say that fans can enjoy sports a lot more than they actually do.

More people can view sports as a hobby or a pastime and enjoy them on a level similar to music or sculpting.

But most die-hard sports fans don’t have this perspective. No, instead, what they do is latch on to a team and soon begin to live vicariously through it. Their team’s success turns into their success. It’s a cute and endearing existence when you’re younger, but it gets to be a bit much when you’re older and still mostly acting as if every play, pitch or shot is equal to your next breath.

Unfortunately, that is what most of us choose to do. Our happiness and sadness depend on what our team did in its last game. Our emotions are tied to things that we have absolutely no control over. A life like this requires many years of suffering in between the great moments. The rub is the suffering makes those great moments all that much better.

This brings me to the Detroit Lions’ 24-23 victory over the Rams in a wildcard playoff game at Ford Field last Sunday evening. Arron Wikaryasz, a lifelong Lions fan who first started going to games in 1999 when he and his father became season-ticket holders, morphed into a national sensation when the Fox broadcasting crew captured him crying in the stands and looking up to the heavens at game’s end. It was the Lions first playoff victory at Ford Field, a venue that opened in 2002 and a place that Arron’s dad, an iron worker, helped to build. Arron unexpectedly lost his father in a car crash when he was just 14 years old. Arron is now 35, which means he and his father barely got to enjoy any games together at Ford Field.

It was also the Lions first playoff win since 1992–or back when Arron probably wasn’t even aware of sports.

Detroit’s playoff win, and the emotions Arron felt when he realized it was about to become a reality, will stay with him for the rest of his life.

That’s the beauty of being a sports fan. Sure, there’s often a stigma attatched to being one of “those” sports fans, but there is nothing quite like the feeling you get from one of those truly special moments.

They are rare. We make them rare because we put so much importance on outcomes and championships, but when they happen, they stay with us forever.

I’ve witnessed the Steelers clinch five trips to the Super Bowl, but nothing has quite approached the feeling I had when they finally made it back in the mid-’90s after a 16-year absence.

I’ve watched the Steelers win two Super Bowls as an adult, but the Lombardi they claimed at Ford Field back in 2006 felt more magical than the one they hoisted at Raymond James Stadium a few years later.

It’s hard to manufactor feelings and special moments. We love to do that in the age of social media, but you know the moment when you see and feel it. How you feel when you think back on it is all the evidence you need.

I still cherish the Steelers wildcard win over the Oilers on December 31, 1989. Looking back on it, that team had no business being in the postseason. It had no business defeating Houston in overtime. It had no business almost beating the Broncos a week later. Had that Steelers team existed today–and it actually did when the 2023 edition snuck into the postseason as the seventh and final seed–the feelings of euphoria would have been drowned out by the calls for Chuck Noll’s firing and questions about whether or not Bubby Brister was fit to be the quarterback of the present and future.

Social media and the way fans act today have turned sports into a zero-sum game. If you’re not a winner, you’re a loser. Not only are a loser, but you’re garbage. You’re trash. You’re either great or awful.

Sports just seem too sterile now, so transactional in nature.

But it’s nice to see there are some folks out there who can still cry tears of joy over simply appreciating the moment.