The Sporting Life:
The Public Professor’s Sports Column
Perhaps you were expecting a list of stuff that I should change about myself? No thanks, I’m doin’ just fine actually. Quite happy the way I am: middle age, middle class, no wife, no kids, a weekly poker game, and tenure. Now’s not the time to start screwing any of that that up.
I’m good.
So instead, I’m here to offer a list of changes I want to see other people put into effect during 2012. Specifically, here are some needed improvements to the world of sports.
NBA: Have you noticed what just happened? Because of a labor dispute, the season started two months late, and nobody cares. Why? Because nobody gave a shit about the NBA regular season to begin with. The standard edition, in which it takes seven months to play eighty games, is tedious. And when more than half the teams make the post-season anyway (which in itself takes another couple of months), the whole thing begins to seem rather pointless.
The NBA regular season is an endless, mindless marathon. And besides, 90% of America couldn’t care less as long as the NFL is in action. So learn your lesson, NBA: start the regular season on Christmas from now on, cut the whole thing down to 50 games, and inject some drama by allowing only the top 8 teams in the playoffs. A dozen at the most. It’s called “supply and demand.” Make it work for you.
NHL: You’ve got the same problem as the NBA: an interminable regular season and almost everyone makes the playoffs anyway. Granted, a regular season hockey game is a lot more entertaining than a regular season basketball game, but quit wasting our time. Either shorten the season or limit the number of teams in the playoffs. And more mustaches. We like mustaches.
MMA: Go away. Your predictable and redundant displays of violent homo-eroticism bore me.
Boxing: Get your act together so the MMA will go away. Do yourself a favor and solicit Congressional hearings with an eye towards federal regulation. Why? Because the cable networks and second rate criminals who’ve run your sport into the ground clearly can’t help themselves. Ditch the alphabet soup of organizing bodies, form one actual league that schedules fights, and ban all fighters over the age of 35 who don’t meet rigorous physical exams, including brain scans.
Look, I don’t need you to bring back the glory days when championship fights went 15 rounds and patrons wore fedoras. Though that would be nice. I just need you to do enough to help rid the world of the auto-erotic asphyxiation crotch-fest known as MMA.
MLB: Start taking the Baseball World Classic, or whatever the hell they call it, much more seriously. Baseball is a fantastic game, and you should be bringing it to the world. I’m realistic about this. I understand that it’ll never be as popular as kickball or soccer or whatever the hell they c
all it, but that’s not your fault. During the turn of the 20th century, Europe fucked over a lot more of the world than the U.S. did, and we all know that colonialism’s major contribution was spreading sports. So to a large degree, les jeux sont fait, as the French kickballers, particularly the existentialist ones, would say.
But despite all that, baseball can expand. For starters, it’s a great game. It’s also a fundamentally different game, which is important. And if that boring British version where they spend several days sipping tea and wearing pith helmets can be a hit, then why not baseball? Don’t capitulate to a Euro-centric world order dominated by Kick-it and Crickett.
You can grow this game around the globe, and a biennial international tournament can help. Yes, I know, historically Major League Baseball owners have been far and away the stupidest owners in the history of all sports. You’ve proven that time and again. But here is a chance for redemption, an opportunity to elevate yourselves from Brain Dead to just plain old Jack Ass Stupid. Which is a major step up.
NFL: Quit angling to put a team in Los Angeles. Few Angelinos actually give a shit, and absolutely no one else in the rest of the nation does. To begin with, ripping an established and beloved franchise out of another city would be a crime (I’m lookin’ at you, Buffalo). And for what? So L.A. can steal and then not support yet another sports franchise? C’mon, it might be the nation’s second largest market, but we all know Los Angeles is not a real sports town. It’s a suburban sports hole where the great weather means people only show up if the team’s winning. It’s kinda li
ke a really big Tampa Bay. This city has already lost three pro football teams (Chargers, Rams, Raiders), do they really deserve a fourth? And besides, NFL, you’ve made record profits without a team in L.A. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
And with that, I wish you all a happy and healthy new year. May 2012 find you enjoying the sporting life, however you choose to live it.