Is this just me, or does anyone else find a rooting interest in every sporting contest ever invented?

Seems a bit odd, now that I think about it, but that’s how it works. And not just with teams I know. Within five minutes of watching a match between teams I do not know … I will prefer that one win over the other.

I was thinking of this today when I announced, at about 10 p.m., that if Bournemouth could keep from being beaten by Chelsea … my day, vis a vis about seven games, would be nearly perfect.

But why should I have cared, at all, about the outcomes of that many games?

An illness? A sort of adolescent hyper-competitiveness? A deeply rooted dualism in which everything is black and white — pro and con?

Anyway, we are considering eight English Premier League matches and one from the Arabian Gulf League.

Early game: Stoke City versus Manchester City. Had a strong opinion on this one because I don’t like Manchester City. One of the prominent sheikhs in Abu Dhabi is the owner of Man City, and he poured money into it earlier this decade, and now Man City is a regular in the top four and has won two of the past four league titles. And I don’t like bought-and-paid-for championships. Plus, Stoke City has three really interesting attacking players. Marko Arnautovic, a big, angry brute of a target forward, who scored twice; a really clever attacking mid, tiny guy, named Bojan Krkic, and a winger called Xherdan Shaqiri (yes, has to be Albanian, with that name) who is called the “Magic Dwarf”, which is just a great nickname. Final: Stoke 2-0, and Man City is about to fall out of first place.

Then came six games run simultaneously.

I began watching Leicester City versus Swansea because Leicester would move to the top of the standings with a draw, and it would be just amazing for that club, which has no history of excellence at this level, to be on top this late in the season. And I like the underdog, if all else fails. Except they were overdogs in this particular match, and when they got two early goals (they won 3-0) I was free to look elsewhere.

Also showing, here on beIN Sports, was Manchester United home against West Ham, a London team. This was a very easy call, too. United has won 19 championships I think it is, and they are the default team for front-runners to support if they are too young to have drunk the Liverpool Kool-aid back in the 1980s. ManU is like the New York Yankees, and you never root for them because it’s too easy. West Ham is an interesting club, the favorite of some of the tough neighborhoods in London, and the side that includes a little kid, Manuel Lanzini, who played in Abu Dhabi a year ago. West Ham gave as good as they got, and United, who are stupendously dull, settled for a scoreless draw — which is good because it kept them from taking full advantage of Man City’s loss.

The other matches on at that time:

Watford 2-0 over Norwich City, and Watford is a promoted team trying to hang (so is Norwich, actually), but Watford is coached by Quique Sanchez Flores, former Al Ahli and Al Ain coach, and I like him.

West Brom 1-1 with Tottenham. The latter should have won, but they have a tendency to settle for draws, which is good, because otherwise they would be hanging around at the top, and I don’t like them particularly. I didn’t need them to lose, though, and a tie with West Brom, mostly harmless, was fine.

Southampton and Aston Villa. Another 1-1 draw. I kinda like Southampton, which is the anti-Man City, building from within and losing their latest new stars nearly every year and still finishing ninth, maybe. I would have preferred them to win, probably, but I also feel a bit sorry for Villa, which is having a horrible season and now is coached by the Frenchman Remi Garde, who gave an extended tryout to Hamdan Al Kamali of Al Wahda, so a draw … that’s OK, too.

And Arsenal 3-1 over Sunderland. Arsenal is my preferred club, so I certainly want them to win, and they did despite having about five key guys hurt — as they nearly always do. Have five key guys hurt. Sunderland is bad, but I don’t feel sorry for them because I don’t like the clubs from northeast England. They have weird accents up there. Is that a good enough reason to wish them ill? Guess so.

This is where I shifted over to the local match, Al Ain home to Ahli, the top two teams in the UAE league. I don’t mind Ahli, perhaps the best-run team in the league, but they are a Dubai team and I always pull for the Abu Dhabi team when they play Dubai sides, and that meant I was an Al Ain fan. That is the club that has Omar Abdulrahman, who is a shifty and ultra-talented little midfielder, who did some good stuff and Al Ain ran off with a 3-0 win over Ahli — who two weeks before had played for the Asian Champions League title and was getting a little big for their britches, thank you.

So, a fine day, and one game left: Bournemouth, a struggling promoted side, playing in the Premier League for the first time, at Chelsea, defending champions, a team led by Jose Mourinho, an arrogant and amoral coach, and includes his evil forward Diego Costa, of whom I have written before.

It was too much to hope for Chelsea to lose at home to an undertalented Bournemouth side, but it was 0-0 at about 60 minutes and I vocalized that, if Bournemouth could keep Chelsea scoreless it would pretty much complete a really good day, in terms of me and my snap/shifting preferences, with Chelsea limited to one point at home against little guys like Bournemouth. But it got even better. Bournemouth scored a random goal with about 10 minutes to play and actually won the game 1-0, further messing with Chelsea in this grand comeuppance of a season (14th place after 15 games) and gave Bournemouth fans a fond memory, considering the club likely will be back in the second division, come the 2016-17 season.

So, yeah, eight matches, I am anywhere from “OK” to “ecstatic” about every one of them, and how often does that happen?

Especially when you have a rooting interest in all of them … well, all of them any day of the week, no matter what sport it is.

It can be kind of tiring. Should mention that.