Happy Super Bowl Monday! For those of you who aren’t fans of American Football, this is the day when those of us who are wake up slightly hung over, look in our trash cans, and say, “I ate how many chicken wings last night? Nope, it’s not possible.” There’s a lot of hashing back and forth about how the winning team is the greatest ever, the losing team wasn’t ever really that great to begin with, and all in all, football fans enjoy one last session of talk about the game before enduring the long darkness of basketball and baseball seasons. I’m going to do that too (I’ll get back to my discussion of novel planning next week), but rather than talk about whether the chiefs choked or whether Tom Brady is the greatest football player or simply the greatest athlete period, I want to talk about the biggest mystery of the game. I’m talking about West Virginia.
For those of you saying, “Huh? What does West Virginia have to do with a game between Tampa Bay and Kansas City?” that’s kind of my point. My question comes from this map:
The map gives the team that, in each state, the majority of people were rooting for. As can be seen, most of the country, 33 states, preferred Kansas City. This makes sense, given that the Kansas City coach, Andy Reid, is often considered one of the perpetual underdogs of the NFL; people like him and like to see him win. The Kansas City quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, is also generally well-liked (except by me) and considered to be one of the great stars of the future. On the other side of the ball, we have Tom Brady as the QB of Tampa Bay, who’s considered by many to be one of the villains of the NFL; most people are only sort of kidding when they suggest that Brady sold his soul to a crossroads demon.
So most places were for Kansas City, but there were seventeen exceptions. And these exceptions also make sense:
Florida, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina: This would be where the actual fans of Tampa Bay are located.
Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Nevada: These are the fan bases for the Denver Broncos and the Las Vegas Raiders, the two traditional rivals of Kansas City. They wouldn’t root for KC if they were actually playing against Satan as opposed to someone who had merely made a deal with him.
Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey: These are the fan base of Tom Brady’s old team, the New England Patriots. I’m a little surprised that the number of fans still loyal to Brady (and some of his teammates that went with him) is greater than the number who are furious with him, but while surprising, this is still explicable.
Michigan: Tom Brady attended school at the University of Michigan, so there’s still probably some loyalty there.
Thus sixteen out of the seventeen states who were for Tampa Bay make sense. But then there’s West Virginia, and try as I might, I can’t come up with any reason why West Virginia would go against the rest of the country here. There doesn’t seem to be any connection between West Virginia and any of the major Tampa Bay players or coaches. Searching for “West Virginia” on the Tampa Bay team website produces no results more recent than 2014, when they drafted a West Virginia running back in the third round.
So I don’t know what’s going on with West Virginia. A love of pirate-themed teams, maybe? Just an inclination to be contrary? But whatever it is, it’s going to bug me. Not seriously, but just enough to tickle my brain at idle moments.
Why am I bothering to write about this? Well, aside from the fact that this is my blog and I can write about whatever I feel like, I see two writing lessons that have come out of here.
One is taking a series of facts and constructing a story out of them, the way I managed to explain sixteen of the seventeen states. A story is more than a series of events; it’s the explanation for them and the journey from one to another. The story might not always be right, as I suspect mine isn’t necessarily. A football expert reading my story about the map above could probably poke any number of holes in it. Sometimes, though, it’s less important to make sure that your story is hole-proof than it is to have a story to poke holes in.
Two is the fact that the inexplicable makes a good place to look for story ideas. By “inexplicable” here, I don’t necessarily mean something along the lines of, “The bread floated across the room by itself, it could only be ghosts or aliens or telekinesis!” I mean the things that just don’t have an obvious explanation. Things like the car parked horizontally blocking two garage doors. Things like the tennis court in the middle of an empty field with no obvious subdivision attached to it. Things like why West Virginia is bucking the trends in the rest of the country. Things that tickle your brain and make you wonder. These things can be the basis of the story, as “I wonder…” turns into “Well, maybe…” turns into a tale.