I am not a fan...

Football is not something that I care for. In fact, I don't really watch any sports. ESPN could be wiped out tomorrow and I wouldn't even notice it

Photo by Dave Adamson on Unsplash

I am not sure when I tuned out of professional football, but it was a long time ago. My parents were die hard fans. Every weekend the TV was tuned to whatever game was on (this was the broadcast era, so you got what you got, and couldn’t follow your team if it wasn’t broadcast¹. They were huge San Francisco Forty Nine fans, and if you know about them in the pre-Joe Montana/Jerry Rice team, they, uh sucked.

But that was the start of my disdain for the sport. I never played it, and in fact I was not good at those sorts of sports, so I never got attached to the sport. My brother played pee-wee ball and others, but I missed that².

Once I moved out, I pretty much never turned the TV to sports. Any sports. Baseball, Basketball, Football, Tennis, Golf, yada yada yada are just not things I care for.

But my wife is a HUGE fan. She is a Stanford football fan, USC (where the graduated from) and of course the Niners. Basically, I just find other things to do while she watches³.

Last night, the Niners barely eked out a win over the Wildcard team (The Green Bay Packers), and I of course let her watch it.

But one of the ads I walked by mentioned that the two other leagues, the USFL and the XFL were merging.

I gotta say that I had a huge what the actual fuck moment. The USFL is still a thing? Ditto the XFL. I mean do we really need more professional sports?

Final thoughts

I think the opening of sports books and online gambling is a travesty. It seemed like every time I walked by, there was some ad for people to “spice” up their game experience by wagering.

That seems like a bad thing for society, but there are a lot of people who shouldn’t be gambling. I guess this is where those who used to gamble on NFT’s and Cryptocurrencies are now funneling their disposable income.

1. If you remember this time, local games wouldn’t be broadcast locally if the game wasn’t sold out, to “preserve” the ticket sales. Weak sauce indeed.

2. Don’t cry for me about this. I had hand/eye coordination issues that plagued me through grade school, and I never was any good at the ball sports. I didn’t feel cheated back then, and I still don’t feel bad about it.

3. She is amazed that I know the rules and tactical/strategy of the games, and can talk intelligently about it, but not enjoy watching them. Weird huh?