I’m a huge Seattle Seahawks fan. When I lived in Seattle from 2000 to 2009, I held season tickets on the 60-yard line. I watched Matt Hasselbeck promise a win during the overtime coin toss in the 2003 NFC playoffs, only to lose to Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers. I sat in the stands in 2006 when Seattle beat Carolina to go to the Super Bowl against Pittsburgh.

I’m a Winter Olympics fan, too—especially skiing and ice hockey. One of my earliest boyhood sports memories is the 1980 Miracle on Ice, when the U.S. amateur team beat the mighty Soviets, who hadn’t lost since 1968. A few years later, in the NHL, I watched Wayne Gretzky score a hat trick in his last-ever NHL playoff game—a win for the New York Rangers over the Philadelphia Flyers in 1997. By now, I was a full-grown man, but it still made my day. Most boyhood sports fans are sports fans for life.

Given my fandom, I was astonished last Sunday by my own reactions to the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics. I only watched the first quarter of Seattle’s win over New England, and the........

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