I love football. I love the New England Patriots. I love sports radio. Put those three things to together and I should be in heaven. I’m not. In fact I have avoided sports talk radio since the Patriots won the AFC Championship two weeks ago. How many ways can you listen to someone breakdown a game? Anyone who can spell football , and some who can’t, have been deemed worthy to be football experts and are afforded airtime to talk utter nonsense.
Gronk’s ankle, the quickness of the Giants pass rush, Eli’s coming out party and Brady’s ‘place in history’ are discussed ad infinitum. Friday morning I decided to check into Boston sports radio to hear Marv Levy, former Buffalo Bills coach, introduced. Here is a guy that knows something, I was hooked. The ‘interview’ devolved into endless plugs of his book, which is fiction, and its applications to the game. I couldn’t hit Pandora fast enough. Media row at the ‘Super Contest’ is basically a sewer line. All this babble is sucking the life out of the game itself. The sideshows of media day, the halftime show and Super Bowel pregame programing starting six-hours before the game is way too much.
The NFL is the most successful sports league. It is raking in the money and television ratings. The question is whether the sideshow is in danger of eclipsing the game itself? A friend of mine remarked that he remembered when the ‘Big Game’ was on in the afternoon and as a kid going outside after it was over to reenact the game with his friends. I have the same memory. Those actions made us fans of the game and built the league’s success. I wonder if today’s kids will have the same passion for the game and get the enjoyment I have from following my team? It would be a shame if for them this all becomes about the fluff.
At The Mic 