For the first time this year, I’m took a week off from work. I scheduled it to watch the World Series. I was terrified I’d be watching the Yankees and Dodgers play, but I had to take the time off and didn’t have anything else planned. Let’s cover some other sports first though.
NFL
I’ve actually watched and listened to some games. I still hate the league. The NFL did some social justice crap on their
opening weekend, but signaled that they wouldn’t do more than that
afterward. (Barring a couple of FOX
announcers, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, mocking the military
during a flyover. That incident is still
being investigated, so we’re not sure exactly what that was about.) The first Sunday featured a marquee matchup
between Tom Brady with his new team,
the Buccaneers, versus Drew Brees and the Saints. The game,
unfortunately, wasn’t that great.
I’ve listened to some Cowboys
games on the radio, mostly out of loyalty to Brad Sham and Babe Laufenberg,
their broadcasters. Quarterback Dak Prescott led an amazing comeback
against the Falcons, but the Cowboys
have been a terrible disappointment this season. Dak’s ankle then got broke, putting him out
for the season. This only led to
questions about whether Dak was going to get his big contract or not. I am getting so sick of the professional
sports world revolving around somebody getting the next gigantic contract,
especially players who haven’t won anything.
NHL
The Tampa Bay
Lightning won the Stanley Cup. Contrary to what I thought would happen, the
players didn’t seem to miss the fans being there at all when they won. Fortunately with the season over, their
social justice messaging also ended. There
was bad news a couple of weeks after the championship. Mike
“Doc” Emrick announced his retirement.
He was my favorite play-by-play announcer. Calling hockey games is very difficult, yet
Doc made it look effortless.
NBA
Speaking of ending, the full-on social justice mission of
the association was successful. Racism
ended because of Lebron James’
efforts. Winning the championship on top
of that was fully deserved. Lebron
didn’t have to demand my respect during his celebration like he did. I give it freely.
(Ratings
were down 50% from last year. The Michael Jordan documentary ratings this
summer beat every playoff game. The NBA
officially said the social justice experiment was over starting next
season. They wouldn’t dare do protests
in front of paying customers, assuming they show back up. Lebron is now the most hated player in
professional sports.)
Soccer
I feel like my criticism from last time was repeated
and heard by the women of the NWSL. A white player interviewed in the pregame was
wearing a shirt that read, “You don’t have to be black to be outraged.” They didn’t take a knee for the Anthem the
last time I saw the beginning of a game, but did take a knee for a “moment of
silence.” We’re still protesting you viewers, but we’re hoping you’re dumb enough
to not notice.
Out of the seven or eight games I’ve looked in on, I’ve
only recognized three players from the US national team (and especially no Alex Morgan). I think most of the
games have also ended in ties too, including a dreaded nil-nil decision. This weekend’s game did see one of the teams
go up 3-0 at halftime. It was 3-2 when I
tuned back during extra time. I flipped
away for like 10 seconds. When I got
back, the score was tied at 3-3. I
slapped my chair in anger at missing every one of the six goals in the game.
Meanwhile, the El
Paso Locomotive beat the New Mexico
United to advance to the Western Conference final in the USL for the second year in a row. Well done, lads. (I would have watched, but the ALCS Game 7
was on at the same time.) All three
meetings between these teams this season occurred in El Paso. The Lobos
football team has permission to play in Albuquerque, but not the United. Explain that to me.
The Conference final came on late Saturday night the next
week against Phoenix. I was surprised, since I’d heard on the radio
that there wouldn’t be local TV coverage.
Unfortunately, the World Series was on at the same time, but there ended
up being plenty of soccer after the baseball was over. Given that a bunch of the players were
wearing BLM armbands, I didn’t feel too bad about missing most of it. When I did tune in, the commentators were
talking about some opponent of Phoenix that had taken themselves out of the
playoffs because one of their players had used a gay slur during the game or
something like that. Some groups of
people in this country are just above criticism and mockery, and offenders must
be punished. It’s as American as apple
pie.
A 1-1 regulation tie against Phoenix brought about two
15-minute OT periods (and I think they play the whole time out regardless of
any scoring). When this failed to
produce a winner, they went to penalty kicks.
A bunch of the crowd suddenly seemed to be leaving, but actually they
crowded around the rear of the goal to watch.
This was the third week in a row for PK’s for the Locomotive and it
proved one too many as they lost out.
College
Football
Conference-USA
started their season first before the major conferences got their act
together. Because of this, their teams
got two weeks of more national exposure than they’d ever had before. The Big
10 announced early that they were canceling out of the fall season. They assumed the other big conferences would
follow suit, but they didn’t. After some
Midwestern political ads blamed Trump for no Big 10 football, he immediately
started working to get them playing this year, which they are.
I got to watch a couple of good games with my dad’s
friend, while dad was out of town on a trip.
I’ve been making appointment time to watch college games since the
season started. Unfortunately, there
have been constant cancelations and reschedules do to positive cold test
results. I’ll watch what I can get. I’ve said that a good college game will be
more entertaining than a good NFL game.
The problem is that some many of the college games are complete mismatches,
so you don’t know when you’re going to get a good game.
Unfortunately, there’s still been irritating social
justice sprinkled into the games. It’s
the networks and the teams behind it.
Not to say that the players aren’t for it, but they have no power and no
money to do it in college sports. The
networks have gone out of their way to highlight whatever subtle protests the
players are part of during the game. The
more pronounced this gets, the more I reconsider my viewing.
Tennis
I watched a French
Open Women’s match and enjoyed it.
I’m as surprised as anyone. I
tried to tune back in for the finals, but missed them. I’m not sure if they were on cable or if I
wasn’t looking in on the right station.
(The coverage has changed networks from where they used to be.) I’m a bit embarrassed.
Boxing
I tuned in for the next “big” fight between two guys I
hadn’t heard of this Saturday. Teofimo Lopez dominated the first half
of the fight with Vasyl Lomachenko. I was completely regretting watching, but
eventually the two started really mixing it up.
In the twelfth round with only seconds left, Loma opened up a cut over
Lopez’s right eye. It started spurting
blood. The ref had to stop the fight, so
that it could be bandaged. He was
probably lucky that didn’t happen earlier.
Lopez ended up winning in a unanimous decision. I felt only slightly cheated for having
watched.
NASCAR
It was such a great thing that there were fans at the Talladega race this fall. They got to see Bubba Wallace leading the race late. Then they got to cheer as he was pushed into
the wall. The commentators
unsurprisingly had nothing to say about the cheering. Then I got to be irritated as the race ran
long and was red-flagged for a wreck. NBC then dumped the coverage on to
their cable channel. Where I live, the
station then went right to an infomercial.
Damn.
The next weekend, they were racing at the Charlotte “Roval.” While the Xfinity race on Saturday was prepared to run in the rain, a heavy
downpour stopped the race. Dale Jr. commented on the wet racing
carnage, “I feel bad for enjoying this as much as I am.” It was finished later (say it with me) on
cable. The Cup race on Sunday didn’t happen for me as neither of my NBC
affiliates came in over the air. This
was really annoying, but not as annoying as when I found out that AJ Allmendinger and Chase Elliot, two of my favorite
drivers, won those races. At least I was
able to watch this weekend’s races without issue.
Other
Racing
Indycar had
their season-ending race in St.
Petersburg, where they would have normally started the season. The race was mostly uneventful for the first
half, but then there were several accidents in a row, including the leader, Alexander Rossi, crashing. Scott
Dixon avoided all of the carnage and won his seventh championship. His nearest competitor, Josef
Newgarden, won the race, including
passing two cars with the same move for the lead. He did all he could.
Right after that race was a MotoGP race from Spain. Two riders crashed out at the start and then the race leader crashed soon afterward. I was watching with my dad. He couldn’t believe the spectacle of these guys laying the bikes over sideways around the corners. Admittedly, it wasn’t that great a race though, but at least it was short. There was only one commercial break during the race, which was prerecorded, because the Indycar race had run long with all the wrecks.
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