A friend took me aside recently. She had watched two co-workers engage in an hour-long conversation about college football and wanted to ask me something.

How can they do that?

She really had no idea how two people could carry on a conversation about sports for so long. She admitted that she tried to get into sports in the past, but just couldn’t maintain an interest. When she finished, I had a confession to make.

I envied her. I envy every single person who can walk around without having sports fill their brain with possibilities and arguments and everything else that goes along with being a fan.

I wish I didn’t instinctively yell at the TV when the Ravens fail to capitalize on a good opportunity. I wish I didn’t know enough statistics and factoids to bore several people to death. I especially wish I didn’t get a tight stomach before the U.S. Men’s soccer team takes the field in an important match.

That last one came into play last Saturday as the U.S. took on Honduras in an important World Cup qualifying game. Because of a quirk of international soccer, the only place you could see the game was via closed-circuit broadcast in a bar.

That created quite a conundrum for people like me who lived too far from a broadcast site, didn’t want to fork over the cover fee to see the game or some comination of the two. I just needed to see this game.

So I spent much of my Saturday night fiddling with my computer and television set to find someone streaming the broadcast from Honduras over the Internet to give the rest of us a chance to see the action. My wife sat upstairs with a friend discussing the period piece they saw at the movies that night, laughing at the noises I made during key parts of the game.

These are the times I love and hate my relationship with sports.

I love that I have a fun story to tell, that I took part in an event that will tie me together with thousands of other fans who did the same thing. At some game in the future, I’ll be able to share a “how many times did your connection cut out” story with some other people.

But I hate that I live at this level. I hate that I made sure to wear a USA t-shirt and paced around my basement clutching a scarf from a match I attended four years ago, hoping for a win. This time, all of the work paid off. They won the game, and I drifted through Sunday deleriously happy. But it doesn’t always work this way. I could have spent the next few days bitter, sullen and willing to spend an hour dissecting everything which went wrong in the match.

Thinking about how different my weekend could have been if they lost the game provided me with the answer for my friend. We talk abut these things for hours on end because we want to pretend like we understand what is going on. Immersing ourselves in our passions helps us believe we actually have an effect on what happens instead of realizing we’re just lumps on a couch.

The alternative is going to see Jane Campion movies on Saturday night.