There is much truth in your post. What happened to me with baseball was that I just saw the game differently. It’s like falling out of infatuation with a girl you wanted. You date her long enough to see some serious incompatibility problems and you are no longer interested.
I used to be a big fan of pro sports but saw enough of WHY it is what it is that I no longer appreciate it. The strike was a final blow for baseball. For Football, it was when I discovered that some timeouts during the game were LITERALLY for TV commercial breaks. I don’t see it as a sport any more. I see it as a business.
I have a phrase I use with people when they have wronged me. It is not a nice phrase, but it is utter truth. It is not nice because there is nothing whatsoever they can do about it. The phrase is this: “I’m not angry with you, I just see you differently now.” And I do. The relationship is forever altered.
People give us free tickets to games occasionally. We were at a Sonics game two years ago, 13 rows up from the centerline and left after the first quarter. I simply did not enjoy watching a bunch of overpaid thugs play a childrens game, and a game I would much rather play than watch.
Two weeks ago we got free Seahawks tickets (including parking). We gave those away. We get free tickets to Mariners games on a fairly regular basis. Sometimes we use them if it is a nice day. We’ll watch a few innings as part of our visit to downtown before what we REALLY enjoy doing down there: people watch and feed the seagulls at Ivars.
Meanwhile, my wife and I love to stop on road trips in towns we are driving through and spontaneously stop to watch little league games played and watched by people we have never met. It is VERY exciting.
I see professional sports as nothing more than a for profit business that I prefer not to support. This event confirms what I already knew.
I don’t hate professional sports, I just see it differently now. I simply cannot appreciate it as a game any more than I can appreciate a movie with bad lines recited by bad actors.
You didn’t know about TV timeouts? I knew about TV timeouts when I was 10, before I even attended my first live game. Every sport has TV timeouts. Sports is business, every level of sports is business, from little league through high school and college to the major leagues and detouring through the various adult versions of little league, somebody is always making a buck on it and is only involved FOR the buck.
NBA basketball is boring, too many dunks not enough basic skill. I stopped watching the game when league wide free throw percentage dropped below 30, and I’m not coming back until it’s up over 60, I figure at that point the fundamental skills of the game will be back. Meanwhile NCAA b-ball still know how to throw the ball into the hoop.
The business of sports doesn’t bother me or distract me from the entertainment of the game. Sometimes it even heightens my entertainment, a consider much of capitalism to be a spectator sport in it’s own right, so things like watching Coors blow a ton of money to become the official beer of the NFL and get NOTHING for it (because beer sales are determined by stadium, almost all of which have major contracts with AB) amuse me.
Well it’s time for the bike ride, should be back and showered in time for the kick off. It’s another NFL Football Sunday.