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What is sports?

To be sure it is a broad question, easily answered by going to a dictionary, but Merriam-Webster doesn’t have the answer I’m looking for.

No matter – I believe it goes beyond a simple bland objective definition because sports cannot be objectified. And on this, the greatest sports week of the UCLA sports calendar, in the greatest crosstown college football rivalry, we’ll look at why we would put ourselves through so much torture, given USC’s recent dominance and UCLA’s 22.5-point underdog status.

Sports is emotion.

You might be angry, sad, happy or bitter. You could be any number of things because those are the emotions brought out by facing a team like USC, top-ranked, haughty and with good reason for its arrogance: they’re just that damn good.

They’re like all the enemies in any semi-good sports movie. These are the guys who told Rudy he was too small, or the Yankees in anything. USC plays this kind of villain role perfectly. It even has the most evil villain of all in head coach Pete Carroll, who faked a punt when leading 34-10 late in last Saturday’s game against Notre Dame. He must have been afraid that if the Irish got the ball back, they might score four touchdowns while converting three consecutive onside kicks and win the game.

Sports is inspiration.

The story of fullback Michael Pitre isn’t too well-documented. Maybe it’s because his job requires him to just clear the pathway for UCLA’s excellent running back trio of Manny White, Maurice Drew and Chris Markey.

But Pitre has gone through a lifetime of heartaches. His mother passed away from cancer just a couple months after he signed with UCLA, never getting to see him in a Bruin uniform. He had to redshirt his freshman year with a neck injury. Nobody would have blamed Pitre if he rode off into the sunset.

But there Pitre was playing against Oklahoma State in this year’s season opener, setting the tone for one of the nation’s top rushing attacks. And there Pitre will be against USC, paving the way and bulldozing a path for his running backs, overcoming odds most of us cannot even fathom.

Sports is vicarious.

There are very few of us blessed enough to have the talent to play Division I football. From afar, it’s easy to imagine ourselves behind the helm of a UCLA offense, down by six with one minute to go, and driving the length of the field for the game-winning score against top-ranked USC.

Heck, I’ve done it six times this week on my Xbox, pulling Drew Olson in favor of me, a 7-foot, 250-pound quarterback with a 99 on speed, strength, throwing accuracy, etc., etc. Vicarious indeed.

Sports is love.

How else do you explain why the football team puts itself through what they’ve gone through? It’s easy to criticize. I’ve done it many times. But how many of us would get up at 5 a.m. every morning before class to work out for two hours voluntarily? And this is during the offseason.

It’s what makes this year’s version, Dorrell XP, different than last year’s version, which was the equivalent of DOS, or “dosing off sleeping.” When everyone thought they were down earlier this year, they shut out Stanford. When people ostracized them for a loss to Washington State and discounted them from even being bowl-eligible, they came back with an upset win over Oregon. This is where those early morning workouts pay off.

Sports is hope.

The setting is perfect. To be sure, besides the players and coaches themselves, no one expects UCLA to win. But nobody expected Rudy to make it either. Nor did anyone believe Herman Boone was the right man for the job when he took a racially divided TC Williams High School football team to the championship in “Remember the Titans.” It’s the American way, the old rags-to-riches story, that on any given day, even against the Goliaths of all Goliaths, David can still win.

Because when it comes down to it, sports is life.

Tran will likely come back with a very bitter column following UCLA’s loss to USC. E-mail him at btran@media.ucla.edu.