On July 3, I turned the TV off after watching what should have felt like a heartbreaking, season-opening B.C. Lions loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

But I felt fine.

No pain, no anger, no sadness, no head buried in my hands.

After a brief, profanity-laced outburst directed at wide receiver Ryan Grice-Mullen for dropping a potentially game-winning, catchable football, I forgot all about the game.

Why no bitter taste in my mouth?

Eighteen of the 25 years of my life on this planet have been spent in beautiful B.C. I love this place. It’s home.

The mountains, the ocean, the Canucks, the beaches, the late-night pizza on Granville Street, the lifestyle in general — I’m a B.C. boy.

So, every year when the CFL season comes-a-calling, I do my best to get psyched up for orange-and-black-style pigskin.

I try to live and die with the Lions, like I do with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills (cue overused, wide-right joke).

But I just can’t feel the same fervour. It doesn’t make sense.

Any intelligent sports fan wants to live in a city that really gets behind its teams.

Most fanatic football followers have dreamt of saluting their favourite football squad in a sold-out stadium of 60,000 screaming fans.

Those are things I want, too. And it would be nice not to have to fly across the continent to experience them.

My elders speak about the glory days at Empire Stadium; they wax eloquently about Mervyn Fernandez, Roy Dewalt and other past B.C. Lion greats.

I remember 2006, 2000 and 1994.

I remember watching Lui Passaglia boot the game-winner against Baltimore in 1994.

It was past my bed time in Montreal, but my dad let me stay up that evening.

I remember Danny McManus, Cory Philpot, Sean Millington and Alfred Jackson.

Still, the nostalgia I feel upon mention of those names pales in comparison to what I feel when I think about the night the Russian Rocket blew Calgary up in double overtime.

Or the day Frank Reich led the Bills back from 35 points down against Warren Moon and the Houston Oilers in 1993.

There isn’t one all-encompassing answer for the following question: Why the lack of Lion pride, Marty?

If I had to pick one reason, however, it would be that, during a time when I was most open to the influence of the media and my elders, the CFL was a complete laughingstock.

This assertion cannot be backed up by science, as far as I know, but if I examine my most deeply rooted sports passions, it seems they formed in the early- to mid-1990s.

The Canadian Football League was no longer Canadian after CFL commissioner Larry Smith decided to go imperial and expand to the south.

There were two teams called the Rough Riders/Roughriders in a league that has never boasted more than 13 teams in any given year.

American media personalities (minus Chris Berman) and the United States as a whole didn’t take the CFL seriously.

What’s worse, most Canadians I knew during those adolescent years (I spent a few years in a post-Alouette Montreal, too), when my mind was a proverbial sponge, didn’t think twice about slamming their own game around an innocent young boy.

The NFL was becoming the marketing juggernaut it is today as its on-field product was excellent.

The NHL was still in its pre-lockout prime and this young Canadian lad was hooked.

Pavel Bure, Jim Kelly, Trevor Linden, Thurman Thomas — heroes.

McManus, Philpot, Tracy Ham, Doug Flutie — afterthoughts.

Not all Canadians my age feel the same way about the CFL. There are thousands of 20-something CFL-lovers in this country.

But there are also thousands of NFL-lovers with no desire to even entertain thoughts of giving the Canadian game a chance.

Is it too late to change for those of us adversely affected by adolescent, anti-CFL sentiment?

Within my group of similarly aged, sports-crazed friends, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hope for Lion love.

I’m not quite as skeptical as my pals.

I’m open to change. I go to Lions games. I want them to win.

I like the team.

But I want to love the team.