Takin' a T/O With BT: The Sports Fans' Struggle To Keep Their Cool

For a long time, this world has blown a lot of different issues out of proportion.

In a time where so many serious and jeopardous events such as Global Conflict, Global Warming, and the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana debacle have grasped the world firmly around the throat and begun shaking it to the core, smaller things become infinitely more serious.

The ability to prioritize is gone—if something isn't perfect, then it's deadly; If something isn't charming and bubbly, it's suspicious; if Sean Crowe doesn't keep his opinons about the Oakland Raiders to himself, then all of the sudden your NFL Community Leader is a know-nothing buffoon with the entire West Coast thirsting to eat his liver.

To the normal world, this has been a recent turn—things haven't always been this drastic or arduous—despite past hardships and difficulties, our forefathers always seemed to find a better way, a distraction leading to the betterment of society and it's attitudes, to keep themselves from going over the edge.

In sports however, we've lived this way for a very long time.

Everything is life and death now—whoever your team signs is a burden and will probably under perform, whoever they draft will undoubtedly be a bust, and win or lose, it's not how you play the game, but how big of an idiot can you make the coach of your favorite team out to be.

That's not to say that there's anything wrong with those thoughts—there are always two sides to an argument, and without the pessimists, the optimists would have nothing to do. Besides, not everyone can be happy with every decision.

But there is a place to draw the line.

One of those places was this weekend when the Toronto Maple Leafs signed Josef Boumedienne. With the reaction garnered in so few places, you'd have thought the atmosphere had just burned out and we were minutes away from being our own accompaniment to our pancakes (or waffles...dependant on your breakfast preference).

For making a depth acquisition, Cliff Fletcher was blasted. He was called (among other things) and old tottering fool who was leading this team down another road of despair with another defenseman added to the roster.

Apparently no one in Toronto has heard of their farm team, the Toronto Marlies. You know, they could use some defensemen too (Boumedienne had 42 points in 52 AHL games last season). Oh, and the contract was a two-way one, so if the Leafs run into injuries (I don't know why they would...it hasn't happened before...EVER), they may have some insurance.

But instead of chilling and putting some thought into their reaction, we Leafers read the headline, saw another defenseman being added to the roster and snapped.

Ain't sports great?

Maybe the reason why we get so angry is because there's a lot of money being thrown around—in a round about way, it's a lot of OUR money—and we envy that.

We see a guy, who may not be the best at his job, score a contract that's more than some of us make in a 10-year span, and we get angry. Not necessarily at him, but at the fact it'll cost us a month's wages just to see him play.

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