It is Monday, February 8th, 2021. I am told that there was some sort of football game yesterday. And a big one at that. I vaguely recall something about it being a championship game though I recall that game being back on January 11th, 2021. That was the "annual Alabama vs. Ohio State game" right?
Oh wait... they meant the NFL championship, didn't they? They call it something like "Super Bowl" aka the "Overpriced Ad Spectacle Show". Some might even call it "The Tom Brady Show" but that might be too obvious, am I right?
Hmm... whatever. I'm not a fan. And not for the reasons you might think.
My reasoning for the general apathy that I have about the NFL as well as the NBA and Major League Baseball has nothing to do with the political infection that has engrossed those leagues much like it has the rest of society. (see last blog) In fact, most of the apathy I have toward most "professional sports" goes back to around the mid 1990s and my high school years if not a bit further. And the funny thing is that despite that general general apathy, I love both collegiate sports and the Olympics.
Okay... if we are being honest, the apathy use to be a flat out dislike for the NBA and, to a lesser extent, Major League Baseball. And in general, there's different reasons for each of them.
With Major League Baseball, the dislike began due to the 1994 baseball strike. Generally speaking, I feel like most that the "professional athletes" in these leagues are overpaid. I won't say all but I will easily say most of them. While I get why there are large salaries, and in many cases there should be, I still think that there is a proven history of many of these athletes being irresponsible and reckless with their money. Before you say "how dare you", do a little research. Investigate for yourself just how many athletes, especially just how many professional athletes have squandered their money over the decades. Especially during the 80s and 90s, when it was observed that a lot of the squandering of money went toward things like "a drug habit" and "prostitutes" among other things and not necessarily the athletes caring for their family or people who might be working for them. Oh and don't forget the money spent on "performance enhancing drugs" which became a whole scandal itself by the late 90s.
I have a cousin who wanted to be a professional baseball player growing up. He played baseball throughout middle school, high school (as well as football, like his hero Bo Jackson) and into college. He managed to get a tryout with the Florida Marlins as a matter of fact though that tryout never happened. Right before the tryout was support to happen, he messed up his shoulder. The extent that he messed up his shoulder actually ended his college baseball career. I don't even recall if he completed college after that. If we are being honest, the injury was probably a blessing in disguise. (This is another matter. I don't like bringing up many, if any, of my cousins. And I've some unpopular opinions on the topic of this one in particular. I think he would have been a fantastic high school coach but whatever.) My point in even mentioning him is that I made an effort to follow baseball largely due to him. I even tried to dutifully cheer on the Atlanta Braves the year they won the World Series (which happened to be the year after the strike). I've gone to games and even played a Braves fan as an extra in a movie with Ryan Reynolds. But between the strike and the drug scandal in the 90s, I was left fairly jaded by the prospect of caring about the sport much less being a fan. By the time that I started doing things in the film and entertainment industry in the mid-00s, I had minimal interest in professional baseball all together unless I was going as part of some sort of networking thing or it was for a film.
The thing with basketball is a completely different story. I've never been much of a fan of basketball though I have tried over the years. Even in terms of college basketball, I have never been much of a fan. In fact, I hated covering basketball for the college newspaper at West Georgia just simply because I didn't care about the sport. If I am being cynical or sarcastic about the reasons why, I can sit here and blame Michael Jordan though it is not really his fault. If I am being honest, it is the way that sports media, and other media sources, built up Michael Jordan in such way that it made it seem stupid that the sport was even played. I am going to be blunt here: the media made it seem such a forgone conclusion that The Chicago Bulls were going to win that it made the sport look rigged. And worse than that, it made it look like that Michael Jordan was the only player on the Chicago Bulls and that none of the other players on the team (including Pippen and Rodman) did anything to contribute to the Bulls winning season after season. They do the same thing nowadays with Lebron James and did the same thing for years with the late Kobe Bryant. The biggest different is Lebron comes off as a completely egomaniacal asshole a lot of the times who in fact believes that the sport of basketball is about him. At least Michael Jordan was capable of being humble about it. Or at least Jordan seemed aware at times of how the media consistently demeaned the contributions of his teammates and chose to try to balance it out. The issue here isn't even Lebron, though I am no fan of his, it is the media. It is about a media that takes a team sport and turns it into a sideshow about one player on one specific team then proceeds to shove that one player down the throats of fans and non-fans alike at the expense of his teammates and the other teams in the league. And at times, it makes the NBA feel like little more than a series of rigged games though basketball is hardly the only sport where this occurs.
I mean speaking of rigged games and making the sport seems like "all about one athlete", that brings up to the NFL and the Super Bowl last night. If you believed that The Tampa Buccaneers were going to lose last night with Tom Brady involved then I've got some ocean front property in Arizona that I would like to sell you. The NFL has been more or less "The Tom Brady Show" for around 20 years with a few minor deviations to sell the fans a couple of other "feel good stories" and to generally keep up appearances. You are probably saying "wait... is he saying what I think he is saying" and to that I am answer "you don't even know the half of what I am saying". I've come to believe that the NFL is just as scripted as professional wrestling at the very least but at least professional wrestling is somewhat honesty about it these days. (Not to mention they do a better job at hiding what is and is not scripted usually.) And don't get me wrong, I am not saying anything about Brady's ability as a quarterback.
In fact, my entire suspicion that the NFL has been somewhat scripted over at least the past 20-25 years only involves Brady in part. After all, the Patriots were not in EVERY Super Bowl during the past 20-25 years. For the most part, my theory involving the scripting of the NFL mostly involves the NFC and AFC playoffs to a lesser extent and mostly The Super Bowl.
- The premise is this: The Super Bowl has become more about the advertising revenue than about the game of football.
- With that in mind, the NFL has conceded, among its many concessions, to put together some match up "by hook or by crook" to try to make sure that eyes are put on those advertisements.
- They have also included a bit of proper storytelling into this matter. Everything from the "feel good win of The New Orleans Saints right after Hurricane Katrina" to "the losing streak of the Buffalo Bills in the early 90s where they lost 4 Super Bowls back to back in spectacular fashion (everyone of the losses were pretty much blow outs).
- Should I even bring up Super Bowl XLVII? The power outage which seemed to mark the dramatic shift in momentum that lead to Baltimore winning over the 49ers? What about the fact that it was heavily played up that the coaches of the opposing teams were brothers? Oh and the quarterback of the 49ers that was thought to be the most promising QB since Brady that turned out to be an overrated flop? Or that it was one of the few Super Bowls not to feature Brady from 2001 to 2020?
- And don't get me started on what appeared to be The Atlanta Falcons throwing the second half of Super Bow LI and letting the Patriots win.
- I could list several other instances.
But don't get me wrong, I am not mad about any of it. (Well... aside from what appeared to be The Falcons blatantly throwing Super Bowl LI.) I completely understand the NFL doing whatever it could to try to take the bad taste out of fans mouths that Major League baseball left during the 90s. And while I think the politicizing of the various things in the NFL is tasteless and trashy, I understand why that has happened too given that politics has infected so much of sports in the past 20-25 years. I do wish that the players taking knees would at least make sure they are wearing "knee pads and chapstick" with the amount of ass kissing (and who knows what else) going on but if they don't want to then that is their choice. (Besides, they could always probably score an endorsement deal with the brand of chapstick and knee pads they are using for those deeds.)
Seriously though, it makes sense that both the NFL and advertisers would do what they could to make the most of a relationship that is benefitting both parties.
Just don't expect me to care about the game... or about your league.
And the commercials? These days... they are up on YouTube by time the game even airs.
A-N-Y-W-A-Y-S!!
The short version of all this is that I am rather convince that too much of "professional sports" is somewhat rigged and distorted by the media.
Cheers!
