I'm 37 years old.
I was thinking about the week 1 Dallas loss earlier. I realized that as hard as that was, it didn't affect me as much as the Dallas game in week 2 of 2003, or Titans game in 2006, or Philly in 2010.
Probably just a natural progression of watching the team over the years?
Exactly.
the final play happened with my 1 year old sleeping on me. I didn't even wake her up.... haha
Ask me again about 6:30 that morning.
And the other night when the 49ers scored I actually said to myself, "Well, that sucks, but, whatever."
Let me add this...the wins are still just as much fun as evidenced by my transformation from philosophical (when the 49ers scored) to jumping around like a monkey at 11:30 at night when the Giants won.
This is a great point. I really don't expect the team to be great every year, and frankly have no idea how the Pats and now Packers do it. If we can get one more SB run during Eli and TC's tenure, how sweet would that be? I have faith the FO is getting us closer to that.
Ever since we started spending premium draft picks on OL, and they are turning out to be very solid players.
I'll say this too, after witnessing all 4 Super Bowl victories and attending 2 (Pats games) it does take some of the pressure off but the further we get from SB46 the intensity and pressure begins to build back up. It's also in some ways proportional to the success of the teams in our division namely, you guessed it, Dallas. Again, I'm simply unaccepting of them having any degree of success.
Be pissed and gripe/mope/sulk for 15 minutes after a tough loss (i.e. Dallas / Atlanta) then shrug it off.
Realize that these guys go home to their mansions and supermodel wives and don't have the lifelong allegiance to a team that we do.
A tough loss - sucks for a moment and not as bad when compared to when i was younger.
Sundays are still sacred to me and Dvr'ing a game would be a Water shed moment. My GF and I were looking into a Cruise..that ended quick as the 7 Day Cruise we were looking at departs on a Sunday through Sunday. I'd miss 2 game..we cant have that. Coming from someone who re-watches games just to see who is or isn't doing their job I think it will take me more time to get to the point where I take the GIANTS solely as entertainment.
I'm 63 and have been a fan since as young as I can remember. Throughout I've always been excited by wins and winning seasons whereas losing games and losing seasons only affected me because they meant I didn't have the joy of winning - but I never got pissed off. I was never angry. Like I said, I always understood my team wasn't winning every game or every season. Losses are like rainy days. Shit happens. Losses have always been a "shoulder shrug" to me. More a disappointment than anything else. Sometimes leaving me with a sadness of what could have been. But certainly not anger. And certainly not any huge emotional loss.
I am 64 and I think age gives me a longer view of things. Each week is not a new Armageddon. Instead, we chop wood, and it doesn't matter how much we chopped on on any given Sunday. The only thing that matters is how much we have by the end of the year. I am at the point where it makes me smile when I hear someone say that the 5th or 6th game of the year is a must-win. My experience as a fan tells that it's simply not true.
I am not sure whether I acquired this view by mere dint of the passage of time or whether I learned it from living through the last two Super Bowls. I am also not sure if, like a jilted lover, I refuse to allow another Flipper Anderson moment to break my heart. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I am sure it is a little of the former.
Nothing was worse than a 4 pm loss during high school. You wait all week for the game, recover from your own game on Saturday and think a win or a loss is everything on Sunday. Then after a loss, they would interrupt the credits with the 60 minutes ticking sound. Suddenly you would realize the weekend is over, you haven't done your homework and you have school the next morning!! That felt like the worst thing that could possibly happen back then.
I became a Giants fan during the Dan Reeves era so it took me many years to finally experience regular success on a consistant basis that didn't happen until Tom Coughlin came around