The Z man.com: Twenty years ago, I looked forward to the start of college football season. If I was not going to a game, I’d make sure watch one of the big games featured over the opening weekend. My friends were all into tailgating at NFL games, so I would go to a few of those throughout the fall. One of the things we would do every year is pick a game somewhere in the country and meet there for a reunion. Granted, the game was not central, but the reunions were planned around a sportsball event, either baseball or football.
It has been at least half a dozen years since we did a sportsball road trip. I’m struggling to think back to the last football game I attended. I still go to opening day of the local baseball team here in Lagos, but that’s because I get free tickets and it is a nice excuse to skip work and enjoy the spring weather. The local baseball team means nothing to me. Over the weekend, I tuned in for one of the college football games, Appalachian State versus Penn State, but only because a friend was watching. He went to one of the schools.
Tastes change, of course, and sportsball fandom is more of a young man’s game than an old man’s past time. Becoming an internationally renowned crime thinker has changed my view on things as well. I spend much more time around crime thinkers in real space as well as the virtual world. Even around my old friends though, sportsball has lost ground to other subjects. Again, age plays a role, but some of the guys have made it a point to drop sportsball from their list of interests. Something has changed in the culture.
The NFL has seen its TV ratings decline over the last two years. more here
‘Lagos’? … isn’t that the name of the town in ‘High Plains Drifter’?
Lago. Good movie. Maybe I’ll watch it again instead of the UN moon walk movie.
the Left has a burning desire to destroy all institutions, sports included. what you enjoy must be destroyed for the common good, to mold you into the new citizen. you must only enjoy ‘state-approved’ activities …
notice all the ‘block-party’ type ‘local-gathering’ kind of commercials? … you are being conditioned to accept non-competitive, non-confrontational activities to further your soy-induced behavior … it is obviously working
future ‘sports’ will only be team-building effort to overcome ‘obstacles’ … much like the Volksmarches of National Socialism
“Val-deri, val-dera
Val-deri, val-dera
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
Val-deri, Val-dera
My knapsack on my back”
It doesn’t help that for every 5 minutes of action there are 2 minutes of commercials and commentators telling everybody the obvious. Dumb asses that just keep babbling on and on.
Last time I enjoyed a sportsball event was when the Falcons lost the Suckerbowl in 2017. But the Left had turned that into a political event long before the kickoff.
40 years ago I made it a goal to skip any college games. Players in their 14th year, what talent? Let alone the perv couches. Lost TV Saturday and holidays. Just auditions for a predator remake,,
Baseball. On the radio. America still lives.
@ Aaron Burr – Holy Cow I just agreed with you.
MAGA20216
KAG2020
Hate to be that guy but their is definitely a racist element in that article lol still he makes fair points; I really lost interest in the NFL at large and now am only really interested in the bears
Well George, I went back and reread it…. twice! I am still missing the dog whistle. Not sure what you are hearing….
“Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.” Geo. Orwell
Someone did a study where they measured the time of action. The average football game had a little over 11 minutes of action in a 60 minute game. Or, 11 minutes of action in a 3+ hour broadcast. No wonder nobody watches it anymore.
@ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ: Please don’t confuse “The Happy Wanderer” with a Nazi Volksmarch. It is often mistaken for a German folk song, but was actually written by Friedrich-Wilhelm Moller shortly after World War II. We used to sing it in Jr. High School choir.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happy_Wanderer
@MolonLabe – you just rocked my way back machine.
@VietVet – you corrected the record, I also sang that very song at at a jr HS graduation ceremony back in the day!
MAGA2016
KAG2020
Kids don’t play sports as much. In my hometown there are barely enough kids playing baseball to make a little league, and not enough kids to have a Pony League. Schools still field JV and varsity teams, but intramural leagues are a thing of the past. I can’t remember the last time I saw a sandlot baseball game, and impromptu football games (hey, let’s get everyone together and kick the crap out of each other) are no more.
A significant number of adult “coaches” have also lost sight of the purpose of youth leagues. I coached in a junior high rec league (since discontinued due to budget cuts), and saw more cheating by so-called adults than in the college or pro ranks. (Including a coach that brought in high school ringers). Coaches were screaming at kids just learning the game. Parents were badgering both their kids and other kids on the team. I called time out once, and had a dad in my huddle telling his kid what to do. Our local soccer league couldn’t find refs willing to put up with the coaches or parents = including me.
If the kids don’t play a sport, or worse if they have a bad experience playing a sport, they generally don’t follow it at the college or pro levels. Baseball is deceptively hard, but unless you’ve tried to track down flies in the outfield, or fielded grounders and made the throw to first, or hit a fastball, you don’t know how good the pros are. A sports culture starts with our youth, and the closest many of them get to an athletic experience is XBox.
I was a jock as a kid in school until 11th grade and played varsity baseball/football. Loved it and it was the only reason I went to school, played LL baseball/pony/Legion as well. Not a bad defensive catcher (with an arm) and had a problem with the Mendosa line…
My daughter has played everything she can, LL baseball, soccer, volleyball, and Basketball. It has kept her engaged with friends and energetic in her studies and life in general. For her its a good experience.
We talk a lot about sports and she thinks pro sports suck because of the money involved – she can’t understand why pro players get paid so much money and other jobs don’t pay as well. Oh well…so much about a college scholarship…
@George: I get that a little bit, too.
@Crackerbaby: for George, maybe it was the “miscegenation” descriptive – I thought that was unnecessarily thrown in.
The 1st Ammd guarantees Goodell the right to broadcast his hate for America. Roger has screamed his hate for American for many years. Generally got ignored. Then 3 years ago Don said Roger’s America hate was just plain wrong. This started a loud feud between America 1st Don and America dead last Goodell,.The feud got the attention of a lot of folk.
Football (properly American Football – the English Navy spread the “real” football all over the world 500 yeas ago. Say foot ball in China, Germany, Mexico (Fusbol in Brazil) and this is what they think . – English Navy) has been the #1 sport in America since the Rose Bowl and Johnny Mac Brown (100 years ago kids) . But football fans – up to 2016 – have been America lovers. America lovers got the hate America of Goodell 5×5 9loud+clear) with his feud with Don, Many , rightfully in my mind, said I can not support a sport that hates the country I love!
Some fans were, and still are, America haters, they have stayed; and as long as Roger hatesAmerica they will buy tickets and watch TV.
This year for the first time since the war I did not watch 1 min of the “Super Bowl”. I was in the majority, The % of Americans (not absolute viewers! )not watching was the highest since it was played in the SoCal Coliseum over 50 years ago!
I think I’m under 250 words so Ike will not fire me?
Pro football is dead to me. I’m done with it.
I took my four boys hunting and fishing when they were young. They never wanted to follow professional sports on TV. They wanted to go fishing and hunting or hiking or camping, instead. Now, they do the same with their kids. The NFL means nothing to me or my four sons or my grandkids and we’re better off for it.
@ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ – you’ve got it backwards, friend. The social conditioning and lock-step mindlessness was all on the side of sports for generations. Sports were “as American as sports, baseball, and apple pie,” and any American male who didn’t like sports had to pretend he did – at school, around the water cooler at work, etc. – lest he have his sexuality and even patriotism questioned. That it’s okay for an American man to be “out of the closet” in indifference or even dislike of sports is a good thing, evidence we’re finally allowed to be individuals instead of mindless clones.