It’s Not Even Just A Game To Them

I don’t have cable, and my favorite football team is playing their biggest rival on a Monday night, on cable. I go to my favorite sports bar which is down the block from our city’s downtown arena, where a big nu-metal concert is going on.

The bar is empty except for me, and in the third quarter a group of two older couples obviously coming from or going to the concert come in. They load the digital jukebox with nu-metal songs. The football commentary disappears and Disturbed songs take over.

The bartender, as invested in the game as I am — it’s an extremely close and hotly contested game, as games between these two teams tend to be — switches the audio feed back and offers the couples refunds.

For the remainder of the game, all four take up seats a foot behind me and loudly and vociferously decide they are adamant fans of my team’s rival. They’re not doing anything technically wrong that the bartender can kick them out for, but they’re being total jerks, including surrounding me to shout cheers for my team losing on a last-second field goal.

After I close out my tab, the bartender takes my pint glass, refills it to the brim, and leans in and says, “Kill that; don’t kill them,” and lets me keep the souvenir pint glass advertising my favorite seasonal beer.

Didn’t make the loss any better, but it helped deal with a group of real-life trolls.