I think I've decided Monday will be sports day on the blog. But please don't just skip over it, non-sports fan, because hopefully it will still be relevant in some way. Even if it just makes you think sports are more "pointless", which is a word I want to get to in the coming weeks.
With that said, on to today's musings...
Everyone in the world loves football. No matter where you go in the world, football in the most popular sport. Oh, sure, in all countries except America and Canada, football is what we call soccer, but to them, it's football and it's their favorite game. We have our own brand of football and it's our favorite game as well.
How do we love thee football? Let me count the ways:
-4 of the last 5 weeks, the #1 movie at the box office has been a football movie
-Both games of Monday Night Football's debut double-header on ESPN had ratings that were among the highest in the history of cable
-The prime-time college football game ABC added to their schedule for this season has been a big boost for ABC's Saturday night ratings. The Texas-Ohio State game, a week 2 regular season college football game, got ratings about equal to the average World Series games (when the Yankees aren't playing)
-The boom in fantasy football leagues and players and office pools. Depending where you get your information, it's estimated that anywhere from 15-50+ million people play fantasy football each year, and it goes up every year
-John Madden Football (in it's 16-17 iterations) is the most popular video game franchise of all-time
-Come to Fresno, CA and just count the number of homes that have Raiders flags flying in front of their homes instead of American flags. (Raider Nation is strong in central California, we even have a store in the mall, The Raider Image, that exclusively sells Raiders merchandise)
The list could go on, but I think the point is made. Football has yet to reach its saturation point, if one exists at all. The powers-that-be keep giving us more of it, and we keep gobbling it up.
What I've noticed with the NFL, however, is that while popularity has gone up, true "fan"-dom has gone down. There are more people casually interested, but the days of rabid fans going all out for their teams seem to falling by the wayside. Fantasy players have their allegiances tied up in individual players, and have little concern for which TEAMS win or lose. Fairweather fans jump on and off team bandwagons each year, claiming they picked a certain team back in the preseason as their "darkhorse favorite" (Of course, no one can ever vouch for these soothsayers, because they never tell anyone about these underdog picks, but I believe it was Donald Rumsfeld who so poetically quipped, "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.") Perhaps it is just a sign of our culture in general. We are more a individualistic culture today, more aspects of life tailored to suit the needs and wants of the individual, with everything from self-checkout aisles at grocery stores to "My"space, to those fancy "Sleep Number" beds. College football fans, though, are still as passionate about the team/school as ever. So maybe it's not exactly a cultural thing. Maybe it's just people taking the NFL on the same terms as the players. The players are less devoted to their teams today, instead chasing money and potential lifestyle benefits (like opting to sign with teams in states with no state income tax or in nightlife hotspots like Atlanta, Miami, San Diego, and New York instead of Green Bay, Jacksonville, or Cincinnati) over loyalty to the team and fans.
Case in point: Roy Williams, wide receiver for the Detroit Lions, was seen on Sunday jumping up, acting excited after making a big play while his team was down 10 points and on their way to a 34-7 loss. Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press (and author of the very popular novels-turned TV movies "Tuesdays With Morrie" and "Five People You Meet in Heaven") asked him about his actions after the game. He responded:
"I celebrate first downs all the time. I'm not gonna stop that. I'm an exciting player. If I do something exciting, I'm gonna show my actions."
Albom responded, "But you were losing, 10-0."
Williams answered, "What does that mean? ... That means nothing to me. The score means nothing,"
The score means nothing? Are we talking about Who's Line Is It Anyway or the NFL? If this is what the league has come to, players not caring about anything but their own stat lines, with no concern over wins and losses, the NFL can count me out as a fan.
Who am I kidding, no they can't. I love me some football. Go Raiders!
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