Me, I'm a shouter. If my TV had rabbit ears, it would probably be deaf from the verbal onslaughts.

I take no pride in these outbursts, especially when they prompt one of my daughters to say, "Daddy, you're scaring us." But they have allowed me to practice Buddha-like compassion -- I am oh-so-forgiving of myself.

I haven't always extended such understanding to my fellow fanatics. Guided by the principle that the traits we hate most in others are those we fear most in ourselves, I've always been quick to condemn sports freaks. When the cameras panned psycho-fans in the stands, I've often thought: Get a life. It's only a stupid game. And you're not even playing.

All that changed last weekend during the NCAA basketball tournament. Perhaps it was the combination of Duke's surprising loss and Davidson's shocking victories that helped me see I had everything upside down. I realized that I was the lost soul who needed a life while the fist-pumping fans I'd berated deserved my undying gratitude. My scary devotion was troubling, but theirs was a blessing. My passion was misplaced, but theirs was a sign that our world was good and getting better.

This paradoxical insight came in a flash, during a Taco Bell commercial, no less. At first I didn't quite understand it. But it started to come into focus when I reached for the remote and saw four books I've been reading that have nothing -- but, as it turns out, everything -- to do with sports. They suggest a central question for our sports obsessed time: Is our devotion to men in shorts a good thing? Or is it a horrible waste of time?

The first two books speak to my pre-epiphany mind-set. "Against Happiness" is not the memoir of a beleaguered N.C. State fan but a defense of melancholy written by Eric G. Wilson, a professor at Wake Forest University. To him, we are a nation of soulless consumers who worship immediate gratification. Our "rage for complacency, for the innocuous smile" prevents us from thinking and caring deeply about life's complex challenges. Wilson doesn't talk about sports. But it didn't take much of a leap to see how his fear that our "rabid focus on exuberance leads to half-lives" applies to die-hard fans.

His comments dovetail with observations University of Florida professor James B. Twitchell makes in "Living It Up: America's Love Affair With Luxury." Since World War II, he argues, Americans have replaced traditional sources of identity -- especially family, religion, race and class -- with more fluid markers of social status. One's roots, he says, now say less about who we are than the car we drive, the size of our house and the teams we root for.

On one level, Wilson's and Twitchell's books suggest America's abandonment of hard-edged beliefs, our movement toward a post-ideological age. Sure, Republicans and Democrats have their differences, but nothing compared to the bitter divisions that have shaped our history. Nowadays, people live and die by their teams. Not too long ago the stakes were much higher.

Two quick examples:

In the religious history "American Transcendentalism," UNC-CH professor Philip F. Gura tells the story of Abner Keener, "an erstwhile Baptist and Universal minister," who eventually joined the Society of Free Inquirers. As reward for his open mind, he was tried at least four times for blasphemy between 1834 and '38. That's right, blasphemy. He fought his case all the way to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which in its infinite wisdom convicted him.

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