Blog Posts For: January 2010

The Monday after the NFL conference championships the football news is pretty scarce. There is some analysis of the Colts victory (they looked bored until the Jets scored their second touchdown, at which point they outscored New York 24-3) and the Saints overtime win (they struggled to win despite winning the turnover battle 5 to 1). In other news, the Pro Bowl replacements have been announced for the four players playing in the Super Bowl. Then, there was a little ditty about the league canceling a second game in Britain next season…and possibly expanding the league with a team in the UK. That’s right; the NFL is publicly championing expanding American football to a country whose sports fan base is upset that we call their version of football soccer.

Conan, Leno, and NBC. This is the entertainment debacle spotlighted in the news. No Lindsey Lohan weight loss watch or Disney teen actress sex scandal can bump this story off the “lite” news cycle. It has been examined from every angle – the straight forward news angle, the industry angle, and the fan angle- and whenever something becomes the subject of this much analysis it invariably eventually falls into sports metaphors, a nice, concise way to explain the most complicated situations in terms of something a good number of Americans know better than the constitution or basic nutrition.

At its best, the NBA is a competitive league with the best athletes in the world playing at such a high level that it shames the fans watching over the age of 25 (who have come to grips with the fact that they are terrible athletes in a perpetual decline) and inspires fans under the age of 18 (who still have the youth on their side and unbridled confidence that they can do anything). At its worst, the NBA is a league in which overpaid athletes coast during games and fans fail to truly care about the game. Every year, without fail, the worst example of this is the NBA All Star game.

When do we know that a sports query or sports story has truly resonated with the public? When a group of guys over 25 gets together for a mini-reunion and manages to talk about them between embellished stories of debauchery. My buddy Bill came back from New York this Holiday season and there were two sports topics discussed: the ever-escalating Tiger Woods sex saga and whether or not LeBron James will stay in Cleveland or bolt for New York. As interesting as it was pretending to be the PR team for Tiger, the most interesting question had for me was the LeBron talks.