Sports fans can't take it

It's amazing how uptight some people are when it comes to sports. I can make fun of the way people drive or criticize their intelligence, but this does not upset them nearly as much as some things I might say about their favorite sports team. \nI have gotten few negative e-mails this semester in response to my columns, but I did get some when I said watching IU lose in basketball is easier now that we are used to it. Why is it that I didn't get any hate mail when I stated that most SUV drivers are endangering our lives every time we get on the road, but got plenty just for making fun of a team none of us are on?\nI've never really gotten mad when someone has called me short, but if someone tells me the movie "Wet Hot American Summer" was terrible I automatically cross them off my friend list. I make fun of my roommate about all of his shortcomings on an hourly basis. I poke fun at the fact that he is dumber than most contestants on "Elimidate," that he hasn't made out with a girl in months and that he is sub-par in everything he has ever tried. He usually just laughs with me, mostly because he is too stupid to understand I am making fun of him. But the second I say "Barry Bonds will never win a World Series because he is a no-talent loser that couldn't even lift his bat if it wasn't for the steroids in his blood stream," my roommate gets more upset than a mother catching her 12-year-old son with a Playboy magazine. \nHe has no ties to Mr. Bonds, yet one would think he was Bond's agent. I joke about this subject just to get a rise from him, but somehow he still takes offense to my jokes about the San Francisco Giants and not my mean-spirited jabs at his personality.\nI started thinking about this earlier in the week when the New York Mets were losing to the Chicago Cubs. I am a huge Mets fan because most of my family lives in New York and northern New Jersey, but I will be the first to admit that the Mets spend too much money on over-the-hill former All-Stars that never produce when they get to New York. I stood in the Indiana Daily Student office watching the game with a Cubs fan who took every chance to try to offend me with his off-color remarks about my favorite team. I responded with similar comments about the Cubs, and he responded with more cursing, getting visually upset. I then said something about him I didn't think would be true, and he said, "Hey, I wasn't getting personal with my comments."\nI didn't know it was personal when I said it, but I later realized we don't get any more personal about others' tastes than when it comes to sports and leisure. We can't take it when someone thinks we have bad taste in something. We all feel like we have great taste.\nWe can't change who we are. We all have problems both physically and mentally, but we realize that not much can be changed. It's the stuff we have chosen that really gets to us: the clothes we wear, the movies we like, the athletes we worship. These things all have to do with choice, and we hate it when others say we have made a bad choice. So remember this the next time you say someone's favorite team is terrible. You may just make it more personal than you thought.