Let's Play Ball! Carlin Does Basketball!

I remember it so clearly: sophomore year of high school, it was a Tuesday night, and Colin, Alex, and Jenn were being dropped at my house. Jenn and I weren’t super close, but she was universally well liked and I admired her ease and self-deprecation, both of which were far more sophisticated than her sixteen years. Colin and Alex were the renowned dark horses of my high school class; everyone knew they were total dreamboats, but they had no idea. They were quiet, good kids, who you could easily fall in love with, but more than willing to settle for close friendship if it meant spending time with them.

Once they all got to my house, we climbed into my dad’s car (ever the valiant chaperone) and were dropped at the Wachovia Center to watch the 76ers play the Clippers.

 At the time, I had played club basketball, badly, for four years, usually occupying the bench, and rarely, if ever, scoring.  I could maybe make free throws during the last two weeks of practice every season, but once a scrimmage started, the panic of doing things in real-time fractured my barely adequate skill-set.

Of the Sixers 2002 line up, I could name Allen Iverson, Mutombo (no amount of money could get me to recall his first name, then or now) and that was it.

My terrible basketball skills and NBA knowledge were irrelevant: I had the currency of my dad’s four eighth-row, partial-season tickets to Sixers Games that he shared with a couple of friends. He would generously gift me said tickets a few times a year, so I could take three friends with me. After this inaugural Tuesday night, the set up wrote itself: I’d invite two guys and bring a wing-girl.

I’m sure this doesn’t come as a surprise but I didn't end up with Colin or Alex. In fact, I didn’t end up with Deacon, Aaron, Gabe, David, Sameer, or any of the others who joined me at these games. But I look back at that time in my life fondly, when I never paid attention to the game until the final quarter.  My boys would treat me to dip cones and pretzels (beer wasn’t an option yet), and it was fun to sneak a look at the guys enjoying themselves while chatting with my wing girl.

That was literally half of my lifetime ago.  Sixteen years later, I am a comedy writer in Los Angeles, constantly focused on honing the self-deprecating, endearingly dysfunctional character who is also named Carlin. 

As I turned 32, I randomly started thinking about that first Sixers game with Colin and Alex and Jenn: if eating food and watching a game with the boys was fun then, imagine what would it be like now, like, when I can legally drink, and replace my chaperone Dad with Tammi from Uber. I know what to expect from my Philadelphians. You know, the heaping piles of human garbage who say “wutter” and light things on fire out of both joy and rage. Somehow I still love them all very much, but usually as a friend. So what if I started “courting” other major teams? See what I did there?

I’ve long basked in the fish-out-of-water discomfort of dating for your entertainment. There was my web series, Cuddling with Carlin, in which dudes literally spooned me in my bed while I interviewed them. There was my take down of the rom com troupe, The Meet Cute. Of course there was Places I’ve Made Out, which was, unfortunately, a little too autobiographical.

So starting with March Madness, I am ready to scrimmage: with a team of trusted consultants, I’m creating a bracket and schedule as I explore the single fans of as many teams as I possibly can before switching to the NBA playoffs, then dabbling in summer sports before bravely entering football season. 

The disclaimer is simple: I don’t know shit.  The objective is that a girl walks into a bar knowing enough that she’s not annoying, but she is not an ESPN statistichick.   Plus, she is not really that interested in the outcome of the game; she is a dating sociologist, or perhaps a dating zoologist, trying to figure out if a guy in a Panther’s jersey is more eligible than a guy wearing Bears’ colors.  With luck I will find the ultimate shortcut – if you know the teams a guy follows, do you automatically know to swipe right?

I may not have taken a math class since 2005, but, as the product of overly coddling parents, I come to you with the unearned confidence of someone who feels qualified and ready to develop the world’s first algorithm that solves whether a Jet’s fan is ever worth a second beer (or even a first one), whether a Blue Devil fan can ever get through a first conversation without bringing up Christian Laettner (see, I have done some homework!), and whether 76er fans are all as lovable as my two besties from my sophomore year in high school.

 Got it? Let’s play ball.