Illustrations by Oliver Robert Holmes
If you’re still young (and therefore lucky), you might be headed back to college in a few weeks. Eating ramen, sleeping late, sometimes going to class, and staving off the real world are all part of the deal. While those things alone add up to a life befitting a king, you’ll also have a chance to play intramural sports—the institution that allows former high-school athletes and the astonishingly uncoordinated everyman to showcase their athletic prowess (or ineptitude) to the campus at large.
Although your intramural career won’t be televised, celebrated with a Heisman Trophy, or cared about by anyone, it’s still damn fun. And that’s the way you’ll want to remember it, as fun—not some dog-eat-dog world filled with cutthroat competition, heated arguments, and targeted ACLs.
Whether you’re an incoming freshman stepping into the world of semi-competition for the first time or a senior who already knows the drill, you’re destined to come across an inevitable stream of jags.
To sum it up, you don’t want to end up like those people.
So with all that in mind, here are 10 simple ways to avoid being the most hated guy in college intramurals.