#StickToSports: Farewell How I Met Your Mother, From The TNIAAM Community

As the seconds ticked down in Sunday's NCAA Tournament regional final between Michigan Wolverines and Kentucky Wildcats, it took me a second, but I realized the college hoops season--something I really loved and enjoyed this year--was going to end with a epic thud.

Not only did the Connecticut Huskies somehow find a way to get the most favorable match ups and march their way to the Final Four, so did the Kentucky. Seriously? Are you kidding me?

As I finished my dinner, thinking: the sports gods have a bad sense of humor sometimes and today I do not like it (I mean, I loved it when they somehow squeaked the Syracuse Orange in the the Final Four last season). At the same time, in my depressed state of hating the college basketball gods, I do what I always do when I am feeling a bit blue--flipped on the DVR and pushed play on the 200-plus episodes of How I Met Your Mother my wife had recorded over the past four years.

See, my wife and I have a few common passions: sports, food, traveling and How I Met Your Mother. Both of us will admit that the latter is, probably, the biggest bond we share.

We found this silly, fun and smart television show on a crappy winter night when we were living in Wilkes-Barre, PA. At the time, our lives were not as happy as they are now. (If you've ever lived in Wilkes-Barre, you would understand why.) We both had jobs we disliked, we had an apartment that was ours, but a month or so earlier was infested with fleas (from dogs that were not ours), and our escape was catching up on the five seasons of HIMYM.

Oddly, we never watched the series in order. We'd watch episode after episode and needed to figure out the show's order after re-watching episodes again and again. For us, this was no problem. We loved doing this because, in our opinion, the show was awesome and it helped us forget about how terrible we felt when we needed to wake up in the morning and grind through the day.

Eventually, we caught up and were able to watch the show in order, however, that didn't stop us from, on nearly a daily basis, pressing play on the DVR and watching it work through HIMYM episodes.

By now, my wife and I have probably seen each episode from season one through seven about six to 10 times each, and that is lowballing. We know every joke, we talk about plot lines, characters and theories like the Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician community talks about Syracuse basketball or football. You could say, HIMYM is one of my non-sports passions and I am not shamed to admit that, because from what I can tell, through Twitter and the TNIAAM comments section, a lot of you feel the same away about this sitcom, which is coming to an end Monday night.

I don't know how many times I've received a reply from Syracuse fans on Twitter when I reference a HIMYM joke, but I know the total is up there with a "Cal is still in this" meme.

Just like last Saturday--you know, when Syracuse lost to the Dayton Flyers--this evening is going to a bit sad (hopefully, not as frustrating) with the series finale. Over the past few days--starting with the HIMYM cast being on Inside The Actors Studio--I've been reading up on the show's last hurrah like it was a scouting reports on an opposing NCAA team. I pretty sure I know how it is going to go down, but when it comes down to it, I have no idea.

What I do know is when it ends, I will feel nearly the same way I feel when a Syracuse football or basketball season ends. Luckily, I know have all those episodes I love still on the DVR ready for me to push play. Oh, and I will still have all those running Twitter jokes still flooding my feed every once in awhile.

HIMYM may not go down as the best sitcom ever, but for my wife and I, and other TNIAAM/HIMYM fans, that doesn't matter. Like the Orange, they're our team and, honestly, we could care less where you rank it or how you feel about it. The show makes us happy and we all know you're missing out if you're not a part of it.

Thanks so much How I Met Your Mother. We really appreciate everything you've done for us.