The Sporting Life category archive

If you are watching college football today, you are indeed watching Pro Bowls.

Frolicking football fans.

The Hipster Muffler.

I’m not the only person who’s fed up with Big-Time Football. Lloyd Buzzell is starting to have qualms. Here’s some of them:

Though you should probably wonder about any game in which it is customary to have an ambulance in attendance, the violence is not staying on the field where it is channeled and controlled. Much attention has been focused on two incidents at the high school level: the 2012 sexual assault of a 16-year-old in Steubenville, Ohio, and the more recent hazing of younger players in Sayreville, New Jersey.

Following the game at the college level is a little bit like reading a crime blotter. And last year’s Heisman watch took the cake with Jameis Winston and his school, Florida State, the subject of extensive reporting by the New York Times regarding allegations of a rape and the school’s casual attitude toward the victim and her rights. Everything seemed to be subordinated to Florida State’s bid for the national championship.

My local rag has laid off my favorite sportswriter. After 38 years with the same employer, he is done.

I now have no reason whatsoever to look at their sports section, except, possibly, to watch NASCAR devolve back to its hillbilly rum runnin’ roots.

As my two or three regular readers know, I’m fed up with big time sports, but I always read his column because I appreciated his point of view and, by heavens, the man can write.

AFAIC, nothing on the internet has damaged legitimate journalism more than Craig’s List, which has destroyed the classified advertising that was the life’s blood of newspapers.

Is there a bigger jerk than Dan Snyder?

The pathology of white violence grips another city.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

I will never watch another football game again once more another time all over again.

Like Crabby Appleton, the game and everyone associated with it are rotten to the core.

I’m so old I can remember when the University of North Carolina was a respected institution of higher education.

The kids may be all right, but the parents are another story.

And, courtesy of my brother, here’s another story of Parental Football Impairment Syndrome.

Yet, some wonder why, by the time they get to big-time football, some players think they are exempt from law and morality . . . .

Daniel Ruth considers Florida State University’s hold over Tallahassee:

You have to wonder what it takes to get arrested in Tallahassee, especially if you are a member of the Florida State University football team. The players seem to enjoy greater immunity from prosecution than the diplomatic corps.

Read the rest, then do something useful with your Saturday, like not watch NCAA football.

Werner Herzog’s Bear posits that football is a reflection of corporate America. A nugget:

At a time when corporate profits are booming when living standards are stagnant, football is raking in the dough while shafting the men who sacrifice their bodies. The NCAA blocks the payment of money to the “student athletes” who make it billions of dollars. The NFL drug its feet when it came to helping former players with scrambled brains, and recently locked out its own players rather than do more to share its wealth from those who actually generate it. Roger Goodell is the kind of corporate technocrat ensconced at the top of America’s major companies, with a one singular mission: generate profit above all else, even if some people suffer.

Do read the rest, then ignore tonight’s game.

. . . are still the worst fans in pro sports.

If you haven’t read the New York Times’s story detailing how the Tallahassee police force overlooks, nay, covers up misconduct by Florida State football players, you should.

Then do something productive with your time, like not wasting it on big time football.

Bob Molinaro on milking it for all it’s worth:

The merchandising of Derek Jeter’s long farewell tour by the Yankees, Nike, Gatorade and others amounts to a tribute industry unmatched in sports history. And the selling isn’t about to stop. Not when there are still so many more emotions to be manipulated for corporate gain.

Jon Stewart takes on the NFL Redskins team name.

Below the fold in case it autoplays.

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Bob Molinaro.

Bob Molinaro isn’t buying the NFL’s dance on condoning violence off, as well as on, the field.

The excuses some NFL people have used to explain why it took so long to suspend players for domestic violence incidents generally fall under the heading of “the climate has changed.” I never realized there were so many meteorologists running NFL teams. But no one who respects the difference between right and wrong waits to see which way the wind is blowing before doing the decent thing.

The fuss about Roger Goodell–what did he know and when did he know it?–is a red herring. The problen isn’t Goodell; it’s not even the NFL. Covering up the misdeeds of star players reaches as far down as high school.

Big-time football is hopelessly corrupt.