I Can't Quit You, College Lacrosse

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

• I love your 10-man ride, which is reasonably ridiculous, just like you. Your 10-man ride is the epitome of havoc and unrest, something that makes my face melt more than my icy heart as it causes destruction and invites danger, two things that I find attractive in a sport and also fork-meeting-electrical-socket theories.
• I love your two-way midfielders, because hard work is hard and it should come with rewards.
• I love that because it's lacrosse season, important questions that shouldn't be asked are asked anyway:

• I love your coaches, especially Dave Pietramala, whose face turns as red as the rose I'd give you if we were in a really committed relationship and you were, you know, a human being that could fulfill my human needs.
• I love your tailgates and Championship Weekend atmosphere, because cooking hot dogs and hamburgers on my back porch in late May pales in comparison to doing so on a $10 hibachi grill -- purchased the night before and eventually treated as disposable -- while dodging lacrosse balls chucked at my car by children -- on accident? bratty punks! -- that don't know any better and I'm not really sure where I'm going with this at this point.
• I love your Colonial Athletic Conference because the only thing that THUNDERDOME! loves is ruining things with violence and explosions and with, like, guys wearing eye patches for no reason other than the fact that an eye patch looks tough.
• I don't love your realignment situations. They are icky. We need to have a serious talk about that really soon. So, that's not a way that I love you, but I don't want to see you hurt yourself and those around you because I love you so much.
• I love your television announcers -- and that you're on television! -- so much, mostly because one of them -- Eamon McAnaney -- has the patience to accept my lust for annihilation, thereby delicately explaining to Earth through his broadcasts why things are called execution.
• I love Quint Kessenich's gigantic Windsor knots, large enough to hide a hard-boiled egg in case he gets hungry during a broadcast.
• I love Screamin' Dave Ryan, because he's a sociopath.
• I love the "Canadian Left Hand." It's proof that love is blind and doesn't care about the little quirks we all have because, in the end, "HOLY CRAP DID YOU JUST SEE THAT?!"
• I love your Wagner Seahawks, mostly because I believe that everyone will eventually be happy even if you're currently under heavy fire and your friend just died in the foxhole next to you and you're pretty sure that your girlfriend back home is shacking up with your now-former best friend and the food is cold and probably rotten and man, this just blows.
• I love that you have survived the "Lax Bro" culture -- which doesn't love you because it can only love itself -- and have, in fact, thrived.
• I love that your fans are so enamored with you that they read a stupid site on the SB Nation network that is oftentimes riddled with stupid mistakes and occasionally not even about the game that it is intended to chronicle. I also love that I can't thank them enough for reading that stupid site, even if I want to light them on fire sometimes.
• I love that some of your shining superstars -- Peter Baum, Rob Pannell, Mike Sawyer, etc. -- are no longer only at Virginia, Princeton, Syracuse, and Johns Hopkins. I also love that there are potential shining superstars that I've never heard of that will give us all a wink and a "come hither" look.
• I love that we're not in an exclusive relationship, hanging out with some new people seemingly all the time and going on all kinds of exciting dates. I'm cool with an open relationship, and I'm sure that Furman, Boston University, Marquette, et al. are cool with it as well.

Let's hope the next 40-something years are as good as the last.