If you’re on a quest to locate the fast-beating animal heart of Duke University, you’ll probably go to certain hotspots: some of our more well-known frat sections or front-row mid court at Cameron. You’ll no doubt find all different kinds of adrenaline and a lot of passionate yelling, whether directed at an optically-challenged referee or a cutesy remix of a song you might just have heard a few times before.

Humble suggestion, however: check out intramural sports.

If you’ve played IM—whether “recreational,” “competitive” or “frat league” doesn’t much seem to matter—you’ll know where I’m coming from.

First, the sheer intensity.

There’s the self-righteous yelling at teammates, opponents, refs.  It looks ridiculous until you start doing it yourself, at which point the reality of being a sober, voting-age individual becomes warped beyond recognition. Don’t think a rail-thin biochem major will throw an elbow at some doughty English major for no reason other than he’s looking to start something? Think again. The “no slide-tackling” rule in IM soccer is just part of the gentleman’s contract inherent in any game played among mature adults, so no one would consider breaking it… right? Has an IM volleyball ever been spiked into the naively uplifted face of a tiny freshman girl? Not by me, certainly.

You could write a dissertation about how seriously people—especially, erm, young guys—are capable of taking sporting events in which very little is actually at stake. After all, most IM sports played at Duke have a varsity or at least club equivalent right here on campus, meaning that IM competition is the most casual of alternatives to a more formal kind of competition. So what gives?

In the words of longtime NFL coach Herm Edwards, “You play to win the game.” Pretty sure he was angry and all bent out of shape about losing to the frickin’ Browns when he said that, but he’s never taken it back.

Whatever the stakes, you like to win more than your calm, “mature,” newspaper-reading self currently wants you to believe. It’s a visceral pleasure, after all. Aren’t we all predators around here, with our binocular vision and our keen sense of internship-smelling? I saw my first ever opossum right here on campus, a strange and happy moment. The next moment, some dude in a visor hurled a half-full can of Bud Light at it, sending the little guy scurrying. Fighting back tears of dismay, I chose to justify this as an act of reactionary primal aggression. I forgave, because we are all hunters at heart. Go in meat-fed peace, be-visored brother.

But we digress. IM sports are about more than instinctive reflexes. Most competitors I’ve encountered seem to have little trouble further postponing long-procrastinated problem sets, showing up to the gym with fifteen hundred calories of Panda Express fresh on the belly, picking up a basketball or a volleyball for the first time in maybe a week or maybe since tenth grade gym and straight-up rolling. If we all had the same “let’s do this” attitude come exam week, lecture halls would quiver from the pre-game bouncing and chest-bumping. Those endearing, already sweated-upon singlets they give us are only half of the story. In order for any old bloke to do Henry V’s bidding and “imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,” there has to be some motivating factor.

So what is at the heart of it all? Maybe pride, since it’s no laughing matter to be able to tell those in rival SLGs about your defining victory over the best that their noble, storied block of dorm rooms had to offer.

More likely, though, is that IM competitors are victims of the contemporary media complex. Too many rousing sports movies feature actors such as Matt Damon and Adam Sandler being portrayed as several inches taller than they actually are. There has been too much lionizing of athlete “heroes” since the days of Mordecai “Three Fingered” Brown. Too many of those silly Madden games! Sports are dangerously ubiquitous. Competing in sports appears to be outrageously fun. You, too, can do that Kobe Bryant stare-at-the-fist celebration thing! But first, get into the game like the base animal that you are.

Who are we kidding? As a columnist and scholar, I know it to be true: It’s inconceivable that anyone could do anything on this campus just because it’s fun.

Connor Southard is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every Wednesday.