Playoffs and payoffs - what's with that?

What’s the big deal about sport, asks Gina Barreca.

I am American, born and raised in this country, and yet I am not a sports fan. Some of you will find this hard to believe and are already writing letters to the government, asking for my citizenship to be revoked.

And yet I feel about sport the way Dorothy Parker felt about skiing: ''Skiing is very difficult and none of my business.'' Big sport is none of my business.

So you can pretty much imagine how I felt when I learned that the football coach at my university was recently awarded $US3.4million ($NZ4.8million) when it was decided he was no longer right for the job.

My first thought was to compare this coach to Marla Maples, who married Donald Trump and gave birth to a Trump child. Ms Maples was reportedly paid as much as $2million when her relationship terminated.

It seems to me, with a $3.4million payout, the football coach didn't get severance; he got alimony. And he didn't even have to go through labour.

I have genuine admiration for individual athletes, but I can't appreciate what others find marvellous about sport. People have tried to explain it to me. For example, art dealer Jeff Cooley has been passionate about rowing ever since he crewed in college and it's always baffled me.

But I've now had several terrific undergraduates who row and I asked Jeff to tell me again what it is that I'm missing. He summed it up in six words: ''Teamwork, camaraderie, discipline, challenge, adrenaline, friendship.''

OK, I have a sense of that. I've known runners, swimmers, climbers and martial-arts folks who hold a special place in my imagination. I have friends and former students who play tennis, pole-vault and play field hockey. In my 30 years in the classroom, I've taught students who excel at these activities and I cheer them on - just as I cheer them on when they do great work in my classes.

My friend, writer Jill Brehm Enders, speaks with enthusiasm about the coaches she had when she was growing up in Ohio.

''They shaped my character and to this day, I hear myself chanting in my head 'You've got this' when life is unbearable. It's reflexive - just as the tendency to hold on to hope until the last second even when 'my team' (my dream) is ridiculously behind.''

Maybe it needs to be in your DNA or incubated early into a child's life. My father had no interest in sports; I suspect his young, tough life was tribal, competitive and fierce enough to make organised games where grown men were split into artificial rivalries seem foolish rather than entertaining. His crew flew in Liberator bombers from 1943 to 1945 over Germany.

My husband, too, is impervious to the lure of teams, groupthink and mascots. When, at a party, a guy cheerfully said to Michael ''How 'bout them 'Noles?'' [Florida State Seminoles] my husband replied in all seriousness, ''Did you have them removed?''

We all need to play, we all need to exercise and we all need our communities; if athletic activity can answer all three basic needs at once, sign me up. (Not literally.)

And yet, after all arguments explaining the virtues of big-time sport, I will never understand how this fascination leads to giving coaches who are dismissed more than $3million.

I say this as a citizen - at least until your letters reach Washington.

- The Hartford Courant

Gina Barreca is an author and English professor at the University of Connecticut.