8 Somewhat Realistic New Year's Resolutions for Fans

You're not going to change with the new year.

That is to say, you're not going to wake up New Year's Day feeling like the universe sprinkled its Olive Garden pepper grinder of awesomeness over your head as you slumbered. In all likelihood, you'll awake in a strange position with your mouth tasting of Hell's many flavors—but that doesn't change the fact that this coming year still presents an opportunity for you, the well-meaning sports fan.

We can change, hypothetically speaking, and we must try to if we want to ever realize even a thimble's worth of our full potential in this life. With this in mind, I went ahead and came up with some resolutions for 2015 that I would like to see in myself and others as fans. 

Some of you will break these resolutions before finishing this article. That's OK. We can't be perfect, but we can be better.

I Will Stop Ref-Blaming

Al Goldis/Associated Press

Ref-blaming is dumb, addictive and the leading cause of heart palpitations in fans ages 14 to 99.

And we do it. We all do. From paid pundits to Tebow truthers, everyone who's ever invested significant time cheering for athletic strangers has stooped to ref-blaming. It's inescapable, partially because game officials are fallible human beings, but mostly because "HEY REF! IS YOUR RULE BOOK WRITTEN IN BRAILLE?!"

That is to say, we build up anger during sporting events and need somewhere to dump it. Why not on the guys who may or may not have missed an infraction earlier? Our team always gets jobbed, and the other team gets away with everything. They've shot eight free throws while we've only shot four. Why isn't that number equal all the time? Clearly a fix job.

We must fight against these impulses. It will be a losing fight, but New Year's resolutions aren't always about the follow-through. They are about recognizing the wrongs in your ways and paying lip service to the idea that you can fundamentally change as a human being.

I Will Start Following an Unfamiliar Sport

Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press

You can become a fan of a sport you haven't watched since birth. This is a thing you can do.

Picking up an unfamiliar sport is fun and scary in equal portions. After a solid month of being glued to the TV during the 2014 World Cup, I vowed to begin watching English Premier League soccer every week in the fall. This did not happen in full because I enjoy alcohol on Friday evenings, and the United Kingdom refuses to schedule their pastime in accordance with groggy Americans.

But nonetheless, it was fun while it lasted! For about six weeks I rolled out of bed on Saturday mornings and fell onto the couch for four hours of awesome British accents and varying qualities of soccer. Some games were great, others were terrible. I began to learn the difference between good and bad soccer, and I overcame the fear of asking soccer-savvy friends to explain details to me. In short, I learned some things, and I'm better for having done it.

So yes, it is good to expand your horizons and blah, blah…but the real payoff of picking up an additional sport is more entertainment in your life. There's no payoff for refusing to give a sport a chance. It does not make you cool.

I Will Lower My Sodium Intake and Output

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Sodium, also known as saltiness, is the leading cause of you being mad.

This phenomenon is generally caused by, but not limited to, the following occurrences:

1. Your team losing.
2. Johnny Manziel doing something in the public sphere.
3. LeBron James doing something in the public sphere.
4. Skipping breakfast.
5. Skipping leg day.
6. Monday.
7. Tuesday.
8. Marshawn Lynch not talking enough.
9. Richard Sherman talking a lot.
10. "Why is this news?"

These instances aren't always avoidable. Mondays and Tuesdays will happen on occasion, and Lynch will do what Lynch does. What you can control is how you metabolize the things that make you irrationally angry. Let's spread cheer and thoughtful conversation in this brave new year. Let's not spite-click on headlines just to skip the article and spew vitriol. 

Spread sugar, not salt, lest we permanently ruin the fields of discourse for future generations.

I Will Use the Correct 'Your' While Arguing on the Internet

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Arguing with strangers on the Internet is now part of the sports fan experience, like attending games or Warren Sapp decorating your home. It doesn't have to be, but it is.

So if you're going to do it, please—please—try to use the correct form of "your" and "you're." No one will stop you from meeting some trifling mother in Temecula, California, but please separate your possessives from your contractions before entering the wash.

I Will Complain Less About the College Football Playoff

Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

While we can speculate about ESPN shadow games and the hallowed tradition ratings ruling the roost in college football, we have to recognize progress when it happens.

A four-team playoff is better than a two-team BCS title game, and while Baylor and TCU might've received the short end of the stick this year, things are objectively moving in the right direction. Four teams eventually leads to eight teams, and eight teams means three rounds of high-caliber college football.

It also means more complaining from a wider cone of bubble teams, which college football experts submit need to spend less time hatin' and more time talkin' 'bout them Noles.

After all, it's a cruel world, and not everyone gets a shot at winning the golden pleasure light College Football Playoff trophy.

I Will Not Use Ketchup on Stadium Hot Dogs

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We're sports fans, not heathens.

I Will Not Live in the Past

As a fan of a program whose banners are rapidly turning to moth food, I know that the past sometimes feels like all you have. 

Former triumphs are a tonic, a cocktail at the end of a long day that helps you fall asleep. Ancient championships are a bedrock of pride, but they're not the basis for current maladies. Some people are past-aholics (not to be confused with pastaholics), and they lose themselves in the day of yore as a means of coping with the present. We must fight this escape, because prior achievements have no bearing on the halogen gloom of the present.

Larry Bird isn't walking through that door, guys. Unless you're at a deli or something in Indianapolis. In which case, you never know.

I Will Say or Do Something Nice for an Opposing Fan This Year

Matt York/Associated Press

Something happened to me recently that I won't forget.

A friend and I went to the soggy, turnover-carnival that was December's Saints-Bears game. It was a delightfully nasty evening for me, a Saints fan attending his first game at Soldier Field with a buddy from Chicago. We sat second row behind the Bears bench and drank rainwater and beer in the drizzling cold as Jay Cutler wailed his final death knell in a Chicago uniform.

It was fun, and it wouldn't have happened had one Bears fan not done me an unbidden kindness.

Walking down the concourse on the way to our seats, I had pulled a hand out of my coat pocket to locate my wallet. Unbeknownst to me, the movement caused my ticket to fall to the ground. I would have been SOL had a woman with a Bears hat not stopped me and handed it back.

"Excuse me, you dropped this," she said, looking at my Saints shirt and smiling. "Just remember, the city of Chicago loves you!"

After another year of watching fans kick, punch and belly flop onto each other, it served as a needed reminder that not everyone wishes pain and ruination on opposing fans. Pass the love on, guys. You don't have to hug them, but you could extend a bit of basic human courtesy to your fellow fan.

Unless they're wearing camo-pattern alternate jerseys, that is. In which case, they deserve all the bad things.

Happy News Years, goons.

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