Don’t care, don’t care.
I don’t know why I struggle for blog entries yet return to sports. It must be boring for my dozens of readers – but honestly, sports is pretty boring right now. Consider what’s going on, currently appearing on your TV this weekend:
1. The NFL Draft
Premise: A detailed science in evaluating players, and selecting the precisely tailored components that enable an NFL Team to properly make a Super Bowl run. According to 17 different heads and 45 stat bars on ESPN, it’s fascinating television!
Reality: Today’s “collegiate” athletes leave the NCAA farm system to become tomorrow’s prima donnas, children of the hype-spewing NFL.
Importance: If you’re a mouth-breathing NFL fan, you no doubt are spending the entire weekend in front of your TV parked in a Priest Holmes jersey, checking off a mock draft, and hoping that you find some bizarre diamond in the rough. Of course, you on your coach would know about it, since you have no doubt seen all these players in person and accurately measured them, not only on skill, but also on personality traits.
Importance according to ESPN: This is more important than a Stump the Schwab marathon, but less important than the birth of Christ.
2. The NBA Playoffs:
Premise: Solid, finely-tuned athletes turn up their intensity to reach the ultimate pinnacle in sports – the NBA title.
Reality: Teams attempt to mask the decline of talent in the NBA and dunk their way to a title, in the process missing 4,378 free throws. Pre-post-er-ous, according to Bill Walton.
Importance: None, until at least June. Or whenever the hell 12 teams are eliminated.
Importance according to ESPN: You’ll hear a lot about how the absence of Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, and LeBron James will ruin this year’s playoffs. Since 98 percent of sports fans hate Kobe, sports fans are fed up with KG’s teammates, and LeBron would have been out in four games – the absences won’t even be noticed.
Better to focus your attention on (A) Shaquille O’Neal, possible greatest NBA player of all time, (B) Allen Iverson, possibly the NBA’s most popular player and (C) Tim Duncan, possible greatest power forward of all time.
(There’s my hype, and trust me, there’s more truth to that than some jackass talking head on ESPN pandering to players just so he can get choice quotes like “Lebron’s mama don’t like Cleveland,” and belittle non-marquee players, feeling as though he’s one of the boys, rather than a 40-year-old caricature of a reporter. ESPN coverage of the NBA is atrocious, and in my opinion, the prime factor in the slide of the NBA in recent years. )
3. Golf and NASCAR.
Not even going to waste my time. Neither are sports, both are games. Argue with me later.
4. Cubs baseball
Premise: With no access to Comcast, I only have access to games on WGN. But, like I’ve said before – a no-hit, poorly-coached team attempts to conquer their demons and their coaches en route to some sort successful season.
Reality: A coaching staff which operates with extreme hubris continues to take a team with considerable talent and misuse it to horrific standards. Also, a franchise shells out millions of dollars to a head-case third baseman who grounds into more first-pitch double plays than the entire 1987 Cub roster.
Importance: Extreme. I’m bitter and frustrated, but these are the players we’ve got, and I’m fine with nearly all of them IF THEY WOULD JUST TAKE A DAMN PITCH INSTEAD OF SWINGING AT EVERYTHING. Cub hitting coaches know this isn’t T-ball, right?
What Cub fans are not fine with, is that the manager refuses to listen to any other opinions and continues to bumble his way through his term in Chicago – often making decisions contrary to any common sense, just on the off-chance that, if they work out, it will seem bold and visionary – whereas when they don’t, it reeks of arrogance and pettiness. Hey, just like the White House!
As a mouth-breathing NFL fan that owns a Priest Holmes jersey, tell me again why I should care about baseball, a sport that doesn’t really give a crap if their players are juiced and whether or not anyone can really compete against George Steinbrenner’s checkbook?
Comment by Yurodivy — April 22, 2005 @ 1:50 pm
And the NFL has paid more than lip-service to juicing when exactly?
Comment by bsb — April 22, 2005 @ 8:51 pm
It’s not the issue of steriod use as much as it is this unspoken agreement that major league baseball doesn’t really care if all the teams are competitive from year to year. As a fan in smaller market like KC, it’s pretty frustrating.
Comment by Yurodivy — April 24, 2005 @ 7:44 am
If you think the Kansas City Royals suffer from just a competitive imbalance, think again. It is not enough for small baseball teams to whine and complain that they cannot be competitive yet run their team with no real goal, purpose, or philosophy when assembling players, yet think they can escape any real accountability to their fans by complaining that the deck is stacked. Then how do the Twins win? How do the Marlins? How do the Padres? Get a clue. The Royals realize millions a year BECAUSE the Yankees pay a luxury tax, they simply choose to survive, rather than attempt to win.
The revenue sharing and competitive imbalance argument as it pertains to baseball is about 10 years old. And I would suggest, that since the Yanks haven’t won a World Championship since 2000, several teams have competed successfully against George Steinbrenner’s checkbook. The Yankees won world titles in 1996-2000 with homegrown, drafted players, just like the KC Royals or Florida Marlins should be able to do. Now that NY has overpaid for free agents year after year, everyone assumes that this is the same manner in which they won their titles. It is not.
The same imbalance exists in the NFL. The Redskins, Giants, and Dolphins have much more money than do the Colts or Cardinals. Yet, because the NFL is so owner-friendly, players can be cut, contracts can be voided, and free agent/player cut shifts are that much more dramatic. Without defending the MLB players union, they are much stronger than the NFL union and have successfully fought against contracts similarly tilted toward management.
What it boils down to for me, personally, is that I enjoy baseball much more than football, if not only for the culture of NFL fandom. It’s loud. It’s hype, it’s wall to wall, it irritates the living hell out of me. I’m never going to be one of those bozos sitting in MSG at the seventh round of the NFL draft with an inflatable helmet and my Dallas Clark jersey cheering for Indy’s pick of Biff X. Turkle from William Penn.
Comment by jjh — April 25, 2005 @ 8:48 am
The Priest Holmes jersey was just a happy coincidence. You can sub in any player you want, it wasn’t intended as a potshot at Chiefs fans. (Who are just as looney as Cubs fans).
Comment by jjh — April 25, 2005 @ 8:50 am
No offense taken. As for my mouth breathing, it’s only because it’s allergy season.
Granted that salary doesn’t equal talent, but the inequities are still alarming, especially when you compare total team salaries of folks like the Royals to the Yanks. The NFL’s setup, though annoying at times since it seems like for the past 10 years it’s been a mad dash by whichever Cinderalla team decides to put something together, is a little bit more fun for me as a fan.
In a larger sense, you mention hype when it comes to football. But isn’t all sport born and bred on hype? Isn’t that just the nature of the beast?
Comment by Yurodivy — April 25, 2005 @ 10:02 am
That is true — it seems to sting a little bit more (for me) with the NFL, as though they’re cultivating a fan base of all-NFL, all-the-time, salivate-over-minor-free-agent moves, and dress-up-for-Raiders-games type of fan. It all seems very much over the top, where, for me, baseball is a little more understated. Though not a lot.
I think parity is becoming the norm in baseball as well, each year around Aug. 1 it seems more and more teams are in contention, and two of the last three years, a team that has gotten hot at the right time has won. (Ana, Fla.) Actually, I think this is occurring in all sports, whereas the focus is shifting from the MJ-led star-dominated teams, into team-oriented, mid-level player dominated teams. (Pistons, Patriots.) Seems healthy to me, and also is emblematic of the recent NFL.
Comment by jjh — April 25, 2005 @ 10:42 am