BRONX, NY – Sports fans disgust me. That’s right, I’m looking at you, you dumb sacks of putrid wet sewer rats. Don’t worry, I’m looking in the mirror as well. The bald, unshaven, crusty-eyed mope staring back at me is a real winner as well. What the hell are we doing? Day after day, week after week, year after year, mindlessly fueling this monster with our time, our money, and what’s left of our brains. What’s the point? What’s the endgame? My friend Mike McLoughlin was right when he said, years ago, “I’d rather play sports than watch them.” I laughed at the time. I was an idiot. Look no further than what’s currently front and center on the sports page.
March Madness. So aptly named. Here’s a college tournament that many call the most exciting in sports, followed by a country full of people who mostly ignore college basketball until they can bet on it and kibbitz with their moron coworkers about their stupid brackets. Then, when it’s all over, someone wins a few hundred or a few thousand or maybe tens of thousands, and the super-rich white dudes who run every damn thing have a big laugh at the poor saps who watched all their commercials for a little chump change.
NFL and MLB Free Agency. For starters, no one should be making $20-$30-$40 million a year to play football or baseball or whatever. It’s completely out of whack. Don’t worry about the owners, they’re still making a fortune. They’ll squeeze more money out of TV deals and then squeeze everything they can out of the fans. An extra dollar for a hot dog here, an extra two dollars for parking there, they won’t even notice. It’s like a Dollar Menu at a fast food joint, you think you’re getting away with something with a cheap burger or a five piece chicken nuggets, but they’re still making money off you. Speaking of eating….
More, More, More. Like everything else in this country, sports is all about consumption. They (the old rich white dudes again) want to feed your their product as often as humanly possible. NFL football games virtually every night of the week, playoff games on Monday night. Hey why not make the draft a full week long? More baseball playoff teams, no one wants to see stupid pitchers hit and, hey, here’s an idea, let’s put ads on the uniforms! NBA play-in games, expanding the college football playoffs, keep eating it up your braindead slobs. There’s more where that came from. When rugby becomes popular, and Matt McCarthy is on TV more than reruns of Friends, we’ll at least know the end is nigh. Until then, this is me signing off on yet another Wednesday.
Come back tomorrow for Buddy Diaz… or not.
