Why I Wish I Hated Sports

America is great for a lot of reasons. There is religious freedom, universal education, an economy where everyone has a chance to make it big, and universal health care (well…maybe not that great).

There is also ESPN. And ESPN 2 and ESPN News. And a host of other regional sports media outlets just waiting to quench the appetite of the millions of sports fanatics that make up the American population. There is no better place in the world to be a sports fan than America—from sports bars, to the university sports system, to a host of world-class professional sports leagues—as a sports fan in the US of A, you aren’t often left wanting.

But growing up in the comfort of 24/7 sports tickers shouting scores to you from the bottom of your television has its downsides too—life just isn’t that good all over the world.

Me with the rest of the Selecta team from my town, San Francisco Gotera, and the Selecta from nearby San Miguel, after playing them in the final of a recent tournament to celebrate the inauguration of the new Municipal Sports Complex in San Francisco Gotera.

When I left the States two years ago to begin serving as a Sustainable Agriculture Volunteer with the Peace Corps in El Salvador, despite the myriad warnings I had received about how difficult life would be without A/C, electricity, and warm showers, much less with the ever-present risk of malaria and Dengue fever, everyone failed to mention what it was I would end up missing most—the comfort of ESPN, particularly laying on a couch and watching Sportscenter on a lazy Saturday or Sunday morning.

Trying to watch sports in the States is the epitome of ease—with any decent cable package, just about any important game is available on TV, and if not, it can be seamlessly streamed from your quick internet connection. And if that fails, I don’t know many sports fans that would be too disappointed that they had to make a visit to their local sports bar to catch a game.

However, trying to catch your home town team while abroad is no easy feat. A recent three-week vacation of mine to Peru happened to coincide with the San Antonio Spurs first-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers. The Spurs have and always will be my favorite professional sports team. Going into the trip, I thought “Peru is a fair amount more developed than El Salvador—catching these playoff games should be no problem.” After all, basketball and the NBA are supposed to be global brands, now more than ever, and I did gleefully get to watch most of the 2011 NBA Finals while traveling through Guatemala in June of the past year. Turns out, my Spurs were tougher to lay eyes on than the Charlotte Bobcats’ title hopes. On the night of Game 1, I quickly found ESPN, but quickly sobered to the site of a horse polo match between Uruguay and Argentina. HORSE POLO! I didn’t even know that was actually a real sport. I ended up being able to watch game 3 of the series, but games 2 and 4 lost out, respectively, to a second-division Peruvian soccer match and a basketball game between the under-23 teams of Brazil and Argentina (clearly, the precedence that holds over a NBA Playoffs match-up should be clear?!).

Me with friends of mine from San Francisco Gotera and San Miguel after a long Saturday afternoon pick-up game.

Returning to El Salvador didn’t provide much comfort. Sometimes playoffs games would be televised, sometimes not. One night, I tuned into the channel that had shown Game 2 of the Boston-Miami series, fairly confident Game 3 would be a no-brainer, only to find 6 consecutive episodes of Two and a Half Men dubbed in Spanish. I never liked that show much to begin with...now I hate it.

And now, Olympic season has arrived, and once again, the sports fan inside of me is truly taking a devastating beating. I spend most of my days trying to forget distant, yet fond, memories of the excitement of the last Summer games in Beijing and the roughly 384 channels dedicated to bringing those games to every hungry sports fan in America.

Here in El Salvador there is Channel 4, and just Channel 4, and only when Channel 4 feels like broadcasting the Olympics. Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte aren’t fighting just to win golds…here, they are fighting the afternoon telenovelas to get some screen time.

In the end, one of my favorite parts of Peace Corps has been truly disconnecting from the world and learning to enjoy a simpler, day-to-day pattern of life that often is forgotten in the States. And I guess learning to swallow missing out on my favorite sports teams is acceptable (at least I haven’t missed a Spurs, Longhorns, or Cowboys title) considering how much I’ve enjoyed living abroad the last two years, but still, the pain of missing the recent NBA Playoffs, and now the Olympics, sure do make me wish I hated sports.