COLUMN: Playing favorites in sports is a tough task, but worth it

Earlier this week I watched a video, roughly 30 minutes in length, titled “The Kadarius Toney Fan Club.”

This, on its face, is a bit strange, considering I certainly was not a member of said fan club prior to watching this video. I’m not a Florida Gators, New York Giants or Kansas City Chiefs fan, either. 

I only knew about Toney thanks to his punt return in the Super Bowl a couple years prior, and the precipitous downfall that followed this year when he kept costing the Chiefs games with his butterfingers. 

Those two facts about the guy, those shreds of information void of context, made up the extent of my Kadarius Toney knowledge.

Yet somehow this 30-minute feature by the great Jon Bois captivated me and left me wanting to learn more about the enigma of an athlete that is Kadarius Toney.

The people who crafted the video — which, despite being 30 minutes long, was only the first half of an entire diatribe about the mostly unheralded NFL wideout — cared immensely about Toney, clearly, which made me care in turn.

What else makes us pay such close attention to such specific athletes? Lots of things, and different things from person to person, certainly.

“My guy”

My current favorite baseball player is Ozzie Albies. This is because he’s a switch hitting, diminutive second baseman. He is also from Curaçao, a place with a fascinating baseball lineage. Last, but probably not least, Albies has an Instragam account dedicated to his notably extensive collection of tropical and exotic fish.

If you didn’t know about the last one before now, go watch his videos about changing the water in the fish tanks and thank me later.

Whether it’s the fact that he’s 5 foot 8 inches tall or his penchant for in-home aquariums, Albies will always be my guy. Like many fanatics before me, I love having a guy be “my guy.” 

On the football field my guy is A.J. Terrell, former Clemson Tiger turned standout cornerback for the Atlanta Falcons. I loved watching Roger Federer whenever he reached the Wimbledon finals simply because my dad exposed me to him; it always made it easier to wake up for church early on a Sunday when I knew a Federer match with my dad and the possibility of a Krispy Kreme donut afterward lay in my future.

It can even be as simple as a name.

Two years ago, when I arrived at the now-unused Henderson Stadium to cover my first football game as a pro journalist, I studied the roster sheet ahead of the matchup between Central and Westside.

Though I never openly root for a team or show any slant in my stories — we’ll talk about that delicate balance in a moment — I’m always secretly a fan of my Chargers. So when I spied the name Keaton Money on the stat sheet, I of course kept my eyes peeled for him. A Central player with a name like that is instantly in “my guy” contention, as far as I’m concerned.

My wishes for “riches” were granted in the second quarter when Central put Money in as the new signal caller. It sounds like a joke, but it really happened — when he took the field, cries of “Moneyman!” came from the stands.

Though Money did not single-handedly reverse the game’s outcome for the Chargers, he at least completed two long passes to generate a smidge of offense, something Central had very little of in that game. That was enough for me to remember the quarterback fondly.

The risks of playing favorites

I’ve referenced Macon’s sports encyclopedia Mike Lough once before in this column, though, and I’ll invoke him again as I reference a tenet he lives by: sports journalism cannot be reduced to shoutouts or biased coverage.

I have to acknowledge that Ozzie Albies hasn’t matched his former All-Star output in recent seasons, and that A.J. Terrell got toasted more than a few times over the course of last year’s middling Falcons season.

Even one of my favorite Braves ever, the fiery, World Series clubhouse battery Guillermo Heredia, made a crucial mistake in the 2021 NLCS when he overran a ball in center field after entering the game as a defensive replacement.

While this doesn’t apply so much at the local level since I do not have favorite high school players, it’s nonetheless an important sign to not get too attached to athletes, and also to remember that they are human.

It can also be tough to consider, or disregard, a player’s off-field actions. Though I suspect few care, and it’s probably better not to, I sometimes find it hard to love players who have histories of domestic violence or other problems.

This brings us back to the Kadarius Toney Fan Club. The idea of the video essay, at least as I interpreted it, is that by the end of it you will both love and hate the player, simultaneously learning more endearing facts about him while growing increasingly wary of his flaws as an athlete.

Even more appealing, though, is the video’s point about something entirely different: unconditional love. 

The viewer is reminded at one point that Toney defended NFL wide receiver Henry Ruggs in the wake of Ruggs’ DUI-fueled car accident that killed a person. Toney caught plenty of flack for his tweet referencing Ruggs, which said “everyone makes mistakes”, a few years ago.

But Bois makes the point that perhaps we should all do this, encourage attempts at empathy in the face of rage. While Toney’s exact language in his tweet was ignorant at best and callous towards a grieving family at worst, the underlying strive towards supporting a player enduring universal hatred may be admirable.

So maybe the point is that if you find yourself furious at an athlete for his performance or, in rarer cases, his actions outside the realm of athletics, it’s best to remember that everyone makes mistakes.

Sports are meant to be an escape from the real world, but it’s simply not viable — too often there are reminders of the thin veil between the two, ties to our day-to-day lives that snake their way onto the ball field. 

Perhaps it’s a lesson to simply let it be an escape. I haven’t fully decided how I feel personally, but it’s food for thought. And it certainly applies at the high school level.

Let sports be fun, encourage athletes and enjoy the show here in Bibb County. We’ve got some great teams. And, unless you’re a sports editor, it’s pretty fun to pick a favorite player.