The Twilight Zone of Sport
We are in the Twilight Zone (an indefinite or transitional condition or area) of sports and I don’t like it nor do I understand it completely. This is evidenced by the fact that currently my favorite sport is MTV’s Real World/Road Rules challenge-The Challenge: Rivals. This show is my saving grace, instead of anxiously awaiting Saturdays and Sundays with E.J. Manuel and Ochocinco, I look forward to Wednesday nights with Mr. Beautiful and his ugly-faced partner, Wes. This time of year always makes me question everything around me. I question the industry that is Sport and how it could miss so terribly on a season (summer) when so many people have so little to do. I question ESPN and their attempts at brainwashing me into enjoying NASCAR, pool, tennis, fishing, or women’s sports. Women’s sports are not my favorite thing to watch, but I will admit I found myself on pins and needles as I watched the Women’s World Cup and team USA sprint, shoot, and score their way to victory. The team looked good doing it which lead to many of my Facebook friends posting status proposals to Hope Solo and many other members of our nation’s team. Now that is what I love about women’s sports, women. ESPN obviously feels the same way as they flood my two favorite channels with women sports. The only problem is, I like sports with dudes and balls more than anything in the world. However, right now the only sport including dudes with balls I have is baseball. Everyone knows baseball is boring, even people who love it, they know. They only watch because they grew up with a father who loved baseball. Casual baseball fans get bored by inning 2. Don’t get me wrong, baseball is a real sport, it is not cheerleading or poker. The only problem is, it is a real boring sport. You know what else is boring to watch? Golf, and I love golf. I play golf, I watch golf, I follow golf, but it is painfully boring for most people to watch. Majority rules in this country, so just because I like golf does not make it exciting. Guess when the golf season is in full swing (pun intended)? Yep, the Twilight Zone of summer. So here is a short recap of the sports we have to choose from during our three months off from school, teaching, work, etc.-Baseball, Golf, Tennis, NASCAR, Fishing, Pool, and, every four years some legitimate soccer. Donald Trump needs to do his best L. Ron Hubbard impression and create a sport or bring high-quality competitive football back to rule the summer. After all, it is his fault the UFL failed, he needs to pay football fans back and make something happen.
To make matters worse, the future is bleaker than Paulie Bleeker’s baby’s future in Juno. 115 days have passed and the NFL is still in the middle of a lockout and the NBA seems to be following suit. No true football fan is surprised because we all saw this coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier. There will be a more technical piece on the lockouts coming later, but for now I’ll just touch on the subject. I hear writers, journalists, reporters, newscasters, and lay people alike complaining about these greedy “millionaire players vs. billionaire owners” fighting over a few billion dollars, “like they need it.” I personally could care less, go ahead and fight it out. Just finish all this nonsense by Week 1 or else… or else what you may ask? Or else… nothing, I might shed a tear and have more time to read and brief cases, but that’s about it. Nothing will change, I may want to boycott football (it is already sickening that these players and coach’s will make more money in 5 years then I will make in my life after 4 years of college and 3 years of law school) but I know it would be physically impossible for me not to constantly watch and talk about sports. Sport (all sports-playing and watching) is my first love and nothing will ever change that. They may make my wife more jealous than any smoking hot girl from my past and she can try to erase it from my thoughts, dreams, and desires, but her efforts will fail as miserably as any male contestants on The Challenge under 6’2-225lbs. not named Derrick Kosinski. I simply cannot help the fact that my song to Sport is Michael Jackson’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You.”
Whenever real sports like football begin, I will be there watching every pre-game, live game, and post game show I can. I will be playing more Madden ’12 than should be legal for a law student. I will join every fantasy football league I can create or am invited to. They say you never know what you had until its gone, that is not the case here, I have known what I have in football since my first sports memory (me crying like a girl while Charlie Ward (the best collegiate two sport athlete of all time-is it a coincidence that the best professional two sport athlete of all time also laced up for FSU? Primtime!!) was humanized in South Bend as ND seemed to have stolen our season-or not-1993 Champs!). Sports invoked emotions I didn’t know I had as a boy and they continue to do so today.
So how is it that the sport industry continues to epically fail during this seemingly opportunistic period in the summer?
Why do they allow fans a chance to question everything about the industry?
Will this Twilight Zone ever cause us to forget about sports in an “out of sight out of mind” sort of way?
Or will this Twilight Zone of sport that creates so much build up, anxiety, and anticipation continue to be the precise reason we love it so much when sports kick it back into full gear?
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