Photo courtesy Salem-News.com
This has been an odd fall so far for me. Not because summer here in the bay area decided to finally show up in October, or because my favorite two teams are a combined 3-11, but because I haven’t been able to get into football—college or pro. I know that sounds like a lame complaint to many of you, and it is. For me as a kid though, Saturday mornings weren’t about cartoons. They were about waking up early to watch football. It didn’t matter if it was a boring Big 10 game (Indiana-Minnesota anyone?), or an even less inspiring offering from some obscure conference in the South. It was football and I loved it.
(I was also that kid who woke up really early Sunday mornings—before church—to watch Formula 1 races. I even cried the day Ayrton Senna died after a mid-race crash. And yes, I realize that a) I may have been the only kid who did this, and b) that most of you have no idea who Ayrton Senna was, or maybe even what Formula 1 is. At least you now know I cry for somewhat odd reasons. I hope that makes this worth your time.)
In college my roommates and I had two TVs in our living room so we could watch multiple games at a time—or just silence our other roommate’s whining about wanting to watch Argentinian junior soccer on Fox Soccer channel. Needless to say, we watched way too much football for our own good.
Those were the golden years that I can never go back to now. Peter Pan has grown up and can never regain the innocence that he once had. I think that is the biggest problem now—I can’t ignore the business side of the game anymore. This spring and summer the NFL lockout helped cultivate my ambivalence. I just can’t bring myself to care about a bunch of rich people arguing over how to divide all their money. I understood what they were fighting about, and why it was meaningful to them. It just wasn’t meaningful to me. There was an interview on NPR with Green Bay running back Ryan Grant, where he explained (in almost the same words) that the average fan didn’t understand that he only made about $500,000 last season, and he and his family had a lifestyle that took money to keep up. I was thankful for his honesty, but I couldn’t help thinking that there are millions of Americans right now who would like to say the same thing since they lost their jobs, then their homes, then maybe even their hope for ever having a better life. They don’t have an agent negotiating their multi-million dollar contract as you’re reading this.
Photo courtesy theatlantic.com
In the end I can get over the NFL lockout because everyone is an adult and well compensated for what they do. The NCAA, on the other hand, keeps finding new ways to make me want to care less and less. Actually that’s not true. They keep repeating the same scandals over and over. How many times can boosters get busted paying athletes, or athletes get suspended for selling their memorabilia, or universities get caught playing athletes that haven’t gone to class in 8 months? How many times will the players be the only ones who get meaningfully punished? The NCAA keeps showing the world that all they care about is making more and more money off the backs of the “student-athletes” who somehow are rarely ever held to the academic standards of regular students, or paid like athletes. Honestly, I have the same view of the NCAA as I do of Wall Street CEOs. The system is corrupt to the core and won’t be fixed unless the courts step in to do it. If you don’t share my view, read this article from The Atlantic magazine and I think you will (at least about the NCAA). If you care at all about college sports you should read the article. If you don’t like college sports and want some reasons to trot out at your next party, there are a bunch in there. If you’re just feeling too happy and hopeful, then this article will leave you feeling angry and depressed.
In the end, I should just stop caring about college sports all together. I’m not their yet. I still love watching my teams, and last Saturday my wife and I went to the Washington-Stanford game in Palo Alto with some friends and it was a great time. I’m not ready to lose that yet. A few more instances like this, though, and I might get there yet.
