“The opposite of love is not hate. It’s apathy. It’s not giving a damn.” – Leo Buscaglia
I was walking across the campus of Austin College with John Cotton during a recent Legends weekend. John asked me about my Roo buddies from my years. They’re all solid, I said. But they’re also like Austin College itself. Roughly half are gung ho. The other half are a bit more apathetic. John paused, looked at me, and said the most John Cotton thing ever.
“Apathy is about the worst thing in the world.”
Yeah, that sounds about right for Mr. Cotton, the guy who arrived on campus and noticed what he saw as a distinct lack of spirit. So much so that John decided to become a Roo cheerleader. Did his enthusiasm help? I’m not saying he deserves ALL the credit, but Roo football did win a national championship a few years later.
John and I were both influenced by our youth. He was raised in the shadow of the University of Texas, and remains a Longhorn fan. I on the other hand spent my childhood years in College Station. Yes, I still have a soft spot for those Aggies. Say what you want about these two largest public schools of higher education in the state. They don’t lack for enthusiasm. It’s perfectly normal to show your pride in Travis & Brazos counties.
The AC Women’s basketball team qualified for the NCAA tournament this year, and faced Mary Hardin-Baylor in the first round in San Antonio Friday evening. I wasn’t planning to go. Hey, kids must be raised, career must be furthered, and there’s always laundry and what not. Right? Then I got a text from John.
“I’m leaving for San Antonio this afternoon. Let’s go.”
“I’m in.”
Sometimes you gotta tell apathy to take a hike.
John of course came prepared. Roo hat, Roo shirt, Roo megaphone, Roo flag, Roo seat. I expected nothing less. We cheered when things went well, and expressed frustration when things went south. We saw the one senior on the AC team, Ann Savage, emotionally exit her final game. We shared a few brief words with her father Scott Savage, who was watching Ann’s final game in a Roo uniform. We also met up with AC Athletics Director David Norman and AC Board of Trustees member Scott Austin. Hey, that’s two Roo folks right there who don’t suffer from the scourge of apathy.
The author Roger Angell will turn 100 years old in 2020. Angell was asked why one would be a fan of athletics, something which clearly does not have the importance of war vs. peace, prosperity vs. poverty, education vs. ignorance, health vs. disease, or the great political issues of the day. His answer was not that sports were in fact important; that he conceded. Instead, he pointed to the whole business of fighting apathy.
“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring – caring deeply and passionately, really caring – which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naïveté – the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball – seems a small price to pay for such a gift.”
The outcome was not what we wanted Friday, but the night was guaranteed to be a success anyway. We simply loved being there to root the women on, striking yet another small blow against the apathy that Cotton will not tolerate. Yup, “apathy is about the worst thing in the world.”
Next time, the haphazardous flight of a distant ball will be different and we’ll dance in the middle of the night. Thanks for driving John. Thanks for covering for me Dianne. Thanks for a great season AC women’s basketball.
