Sure it looks like fun and games-free passes into the hottest sporting events, hobnobbing with famous players and dedicating your life to something most pencil-pushers can only dream about. And it is fun to watch the games, meet your heroes and enjoy what you are doing, but being a sportswriter is not all it's cracked up to be.

I joined the sports staff at The Crimson because I am a sports fan and I like to write. Sounds like the perfect combination, right? Well, in a way, yes, for all those reasons mentioned above. But in another way, no. I've been to countless Harvard athletic events, but I haven't always been able to enjoy them. While friends sat in the stands eating popcorn and laughing, I was courtside furiously taking notes, forced to watch every play, even when the game was no longer interesting. After a defeat, I had to deal with the mad coaches and disheartened players, trying to get something out of them beyond the vacuous cliches like "We gave it 110 percent" or "It was a tough loss." Isn't 110 percent impossible? Aren't all losses tough?

The problem is that I am a sports fan first, and everything else second. The sports fan in me has been on temporary hiatus for these four years as, through Zen techniques and constant meditation, I have succeeded in not breaking into "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" while sitting in press row at Harvard basketball games.

Only I really want to.

I love being a fan. I love losing myself in a crowd, shouting myself hoarse and feeling exhilarated with a win and blue with a loss. I love saying "my team" when I've never met the players. In high school, when they announced the year-end awards for social life, I rightly took home "Most School Spirit." I had been the basketball fan with the basketball for a hat and the painted face who led the basketball crowd in "the wave." I was a bona fide fan.

Of course, part of being a fan stems from playing sports. When I was a boy-back when Bob Saget was a clean-cut dad instead of a foul-mouthed and bitter man-there was one thing I wanted to be when I grew up: a baseball player. But by the time the wheat was beginning to separate from the Little League chaff, I was firmly established as chaff. I had trouble hitting to the outfield, and my fastball topped out in the low sixties with a penchant for hitting the backstop.

I was a tall one, so I turned to basketball. But I was also a skinny one. I hit the ceiling-both literally and figuratively-in my sophomore year of high school. On the high school basketball team, I had become next in a long line of blond, gangly white centers. Only weight training wasn't helping me much. The other guys, mostly from the School of Hard Knocks, got bigger. Much bigger.

A pro hoops career wasn't in the cards, so I left to join my other dorky friends on the tennis team, where I wouldn't have to worry about opponents' elbows bruising my sternum. Eight years later, I'm still waiting for my 6'5 frame to fill out.