“Sports fans, by and large, are idiots.” – Michael Bleach, “Bleach angry; very, very angry,” The Badger Herald, Sept. 10, 2010.

Yes, Bleach, yes we are. We leave stupid, baseless comments on every message board, from CBS Sports to Madison.com. We avoid punctuation like it’s leprosy, and we consider spelling names correctly to be of little importance (sometimes we don’t even know who we’re talking about). Everyone else is a dumbass and is just bitter about how our team beat theirs last season.

Our team is always better than yours, because so-and-so is due for a breakout year and that opposing defense just has too many washed-up, overpriced veterans. That starting pitcher we’re going against? He just looks like a tool, so there’s no way we could lose. Our own overrated player will dominate his bitch-stupid face, because he’s on a “hot streak.”

So what if we’re on a nine-game losing streak? Every streak ends sometimes, unless you’re a Cubs fan, right? This is when our controversial coach who’s on the hot seat gets his signature win, saves his job and carries the team from the doldrums, four years after he initially promised to do so. Yeah, we didn’t expect to win the game anyways, but you saw how good we’ll be next year, right? You did see, didn’t you? Next year, man.

We are so dumb.

But really, it’s not just for those reasons. Sports just have a way of taking away the parts of our brains responsible for reason, logic, grammar and sense of reality. I’m sure Badger_fan069 knows what a comma is, but sports-fueled rage overrules silly things like sounding articulate in a public forum.

If you like sports, you’re guilty of at least one of the infractions listed above. It’s a guarantee, a sure-shot, like Jay Cutler throwing a pick when his pocket collapses. If you haven’t espoused one of those idiotic sentiments at any point in your life, you’re probably watching “Dancing with the Stars” instead of Monday Night Football.

But for all our shortcomings, we’re very good at some things. We’re fiercely loyal to our teams, even if that means we hate everything about them and get irrationally angry at times. Dammit, Rodgers, you know better than to throw that pick! Come on, Mauer, you don’t swing at garbage like that. Heaven forbid a cornerback made a spectacular play, or it was actually a very good pitch.

We’ll defend and condemn our teams, sometimes in consecutive days, or even within the span of one game. We’ll argue, fight, yell, shout, brag, scream, pout and cry in the name of the Packers, or Bears or Vikings.

We’ll band together, strangers rooting against a common opponent. The fellowship is strong: What’s another Phillies fan doing here? Let me buy you a drink.

But there is one thing we are especially bad at. Something that goes beyond our terrible typing skills, far past our irrational beliefs that John Clay is truly a Heisman contender.

Sports fans, we can’t enjoy the moment.

Let that sink in for a moment. Chew it a bit, really savor what I’m saying. I’ll even repeat it for emphasis: We. Can’t. Enjoy. The. Moment.

Packers fans, Vikings fans, we all know the heartbreak of a Brett Favre interception in the NFC Championship. Bears fans, you’ve been to a Super Bowl this decade, even if you did lose. But those are great accomplishments. Some teams would just be glad to be there, right? The 49ers would kill for that end to their season.

No, they wouldn’t. We know this. Because all you remember from a loss in a game of that magnitude is how you got this close and failed. Nobody is happy about making a title game; they’re only bitter about losing in it.

Our own men’s hockey team made its 11th Frozen Four. Plenty of Badger fans made the trip out to Detroit. Blake Geoffrion won the school’s first Hobey Baker award and UW capped an amazing season. But what do we remember? Losing 5-0 to Boston College.

As a Twins fan, I’m still sour over the ALDS loss to the Yankees, and I have the bruised knuckles to prove it. In reality, it was a remarkable season, opening a gorgeous new ballpark and cruising to another AL Central title, even without All-Stars Joe Nathan and Justin Morneau. It’s an accomplishment – one that took 162 games to build, but just three to render a failure.

We can’t appreciate what we’ve got, when we’ve got it. There’s almost always something more, something we didn’t quite achieve. We don’t savor the moment when it’s happening; yes, this is a great game, but it will be so much better when we hoist that trophy, pop those bottles of champagne. We’re greedy.

This week, we’ve got something special here in Madison. The No. 1 team in the nation is coming to town for the first time since 1997. College Gameday is making an appearance after a six-year hiatus. Yes, E.A. will be back in Mad Town. It should be a great day.

No matter what your view on these 2010 Badgers, you have to at least feel there’s a chance, just a small one, UW could win. The Badgers have played the Buckeyes tough at home – Jim Tressel’s teams have never scored more than 20 points at Camp Randall. And with the Gameday crew, the importance of the game and the extra sleep (and resultantly, the extra time to drink), the atmosphere will be crazy.

So maybe UW wins. The town is alight with drunken joy, the field is rushed and all is good in the world. It’s a perfect Saturday.

Or, like most matchups between the No. 1 and No. 18 teams, it’s the top dog that prevails. A great day of excitement, a hyped night game and all the fun that came with it is tarnished by numbers on a scoreboard. Nobody remembers the day, just the disappointment at the end of it.

Even if UW pulls off the upset, a loss at Iowa the week after would kill all those good feelings. Success is fleeting in sports and easily forgotten.

So whatever you do Saturday, whether it’s just an extended version of a typical gameday or you camp out in hopes of meeting Lee Corso, savor it. You don’t get a chance to take down the top team in the country every day. Get everything you can out of it.

Because you could lose it, just like that.

Adam is a senior majoring in journalism, begging you to just enjoy this Saturday. You can e-mail him at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter @adamjsholt.