Yesterday Tottenham Hotspur beat Leicester City 5-4 in a crazy game to end the season. They finished third in the league and assured Champions League soccer next season.

I already wrote about how this outcome could very easily not happen, especially knowing my team. But they pulled through. They beat Newcastle and then Leicester to finish third, above Arsenal for the second year in a row.

Already I’m thinking about next season, who will come, who will go. Will Harry Kane stay? Will Dele Alli? Christian Eriksen? Will Mauricio Pochettino stay on as manager?

If you regularly read my blog, you probably don’t come here for the sports and surely don’t care about these names. But it’s taken the end of a season to recognize that I do. I really do.

I’ve been following Spurs for ten seasons now. My first Spurs jersey was the 125th anniversary jersey, a simple, white Puma kit. When I started watching, Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov were the strikers. Michael Dawson and Ledley King were at the back. Paul Robinson was in goal. Gareth Bale wasn’t one of the greatest players in the world, he was actually someone who cursed Spurs with a loss whenever he started.

Along the way there were so many other names that are taking up space in my brain that could be used for far more productive things. Pascal Chimbonda, Steed Malbranque, Roman Pavlyuchenko, Eidur Gudjohnsen, Jonathan Woodgate, Tom Huddlestone, Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Wilson Palacios, Aaron Lennon, David Bentley, and some truly great soccer from Rafael van der Vaart and Luka Modric.

A friend once told me something that I have come to believe. You need something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. When the former two were lacking, Spurs provided the latter. I often couldn’t wait for the weekend game. I couldn’t wait to get up, walk from my apartment to Iona in Williamsburg and watch with other fans like me. I’d sit on a stool with my coffee, which the bartender was thankfully cool with, and watch games with makeshift friends while slowly coming to love the smell of a bar in the morning.

I chose this. And I continue to choose being a fan. People often as if my British father was a Spurs fan and that’s why I’m one too.

Nope. He wasn’t.

I just chose the team and it turned out to be a fit. (We did, however, go to a game in 2009, shortly before he passed away, and it was great.)

My fandom has outlasted relationships and jobs. It’s spanned the death of my parents and the birth of my friends’ children.

It’s just a game and I could do without it. I spend way too much money each month for cable to ensure that I’ll have the games. I spend time and mental energy on this team.

Am I going to stop watching? I mean, I think you know the answer to that. Call it stubbornness or sunk cost or maybe even an arbitrary commitment to what basically amounts to a form of entertainment.

We finished third. Next year we’ll be in the Champions League. In August I’ll buy the new jersey and I’ll start the whole thing over again.

What the hell else am I going to do?