Sports! (General Thread)

An 18 game regular season and Thursday Night Football can't coexist. The probability of retaining any star players to profit off it would be low and I seriously doubt the NFLPA would even come to terms with it. The CBA expires after next season and I feel like that will be a serious point of contention. May be fireworks regarding that and other stuff despite what the media has reported as productive meetings.

I agree with everything you guys are saying.  I don't follow the modern-day NFL as a fan but rather as an observer.  And I'm aware of the NFL's push for more games, to the detriment of just about everyone but NFL owners and TV networks.  And even they may not benefit in the long-term.

I used to be a very big football fan back in the early-mid 90's.  The Joe Montana/Jerry Rice 49'ers were my favorite team because watching them made me initially love football.  (I still carry a little tension against the Cowboys, Packers, and Falcons for eventually dethroning the 49'ers!) It was my favorite sport for a while. 

I'm not entirely sure what happened. Either the way the NFL presented itself changed in or I started noticing something I had not before.  Either way, I don't follow the NFL anymore. It became a little tiring for me.

There is a line in Family Guy - during one of the flood episodes - where they are discussing their favorite movies.  Peter mentioned he never liked Godfather 2. The rest of the family jumped down his throat (not literally, it wasn't a cut-away).  His response to the questioning of why he didn't like it was that "it insists upon itself."

That is kind of how I feel about the NFL.  It insists upon its own importance (as a sport and to American culture) to the detriment of just about anything else: especially player safety. And the writing on the wall about seemingly expotentially rising CTE as a result of the sport should make any company consider the safety of its athletes. Even a heartless person who doesn't truly care about people and just money should at least have some rational self-interest in realizing that their business they want to sustain over the long term that depends on its athletes can't work if the athletes are getting hurt. More football players are retiring early as a result of concussions and concerns about CTE. More potential football players seem to be reconsidering their choice to go into the NFL.  That isn't good for business.  But I think the NFL may be afraid to truly recognize that. The more concessions they show toward the rising head injuries, the more they potentially open themselves up to lawsuits based on what knowledge they have (and had) that the sport could be made safer.

And I know JR's line applies to football: "It ain't ballet."  I'd never tell someone not to play (or watch) football if they really want to. But there are ways to acknowledge the risk of football (or boxing or MMA or even basketball) without making things worse. The NFL seems hellbent on going the opposite direction.

Over the past few years, the NFL wants to have more games: thereby increasing the odds of injuries not just due to more games, but the decrease of rest between those games. It's like the people deciding this already have CTE. (and the NBA is stupid for also wanting to increase games when the past few playoffs have been marred by major injuries: many of which caused by a lack of rest between games.) 

I still respect and even like football as a sport for the strategy and occasional beauty of the game (I love interceptions, most of all) but can't stand the modern day NFL's insistence on itself without any self-awareness. I also hate the kiss ass treatment it gets from the media and culture. 

I can't stand how TV networks bend over backwards to accommodate it either.  One reason I started to hate the NFL and the NFL's preferential treatment was because Fox completely jobbed out Futurama to it in the late 90's.  Unless there's a national emergency or something of national importance, there's no reason a TV show with an hour of lead-in commentary should be allowed to cut into like three other shows. There's even less reason that analysis of a game that already happened should be allowed to cut into a set TV schedule for a show entering a new season. But because the NFL presents itself and is accepted as "must see TV," it gets away with what it wants. I get the money that it brings in but it has a clout that it doesn't deserve.  It contributed to souring me on the sport as a whole.

I can't imagine a grueling NFL season being given even more games, and more nights per week.  A team playing on Sunday and then Thursday or Thursday and then Sunday is horrific.  Adding even more Sundays makes it worse.


Anyway - that's just my reaction to all of this. 


Side note: The first time I ever "simmed" a video game was one of the PSX football games. I think it was Madden '98.  I also played Madden '93 more than any other sports video game on SNES.  

Perhaps it's not the most popular opinion but I dislike ALL prime-time games. I dislike the idea of changing my schedule to watch something that I can see at a more reasonable time any other week. I don't particularly enjoy trying to stay up to 11pm on nights where I have to leave the house at 5am the following morning. Yeah, it's good for exposure and money and all of that shit but it's not fun and I usually don't finish those games, especially if it's on a Monday or a Thursday night when I've been up since 3-4 am. Sure, I don't have to watch the games but having watched like 90% of Chiefs games since 1992, it would be kind of weird to just drop the habit, even with the inconvenience a couple of times (or 5 >_>) a season.

Congratulations to the 2019 RWC champ Springbocks! What a great tournament, the Bocke were just a bit too much for the strong English side to handle. Hopefully between this great tournament and sevens increasing popularity, rugby will continue to grow in popularity.

One of my favourite matches of the tournament was Wales vs RSA in the semifinal, a close, physical, meat grinder of a match that RSA barely squeaked a win out of. Faf de Klerk, RSA’s shit disturbing scrum half was the man of the match for me after this little tussle! Ball looked like he was going borrow a Scottish favourite for de Klerk, the ol’ Glasgow kiss, but got his shit together before crushing the little guy!

There have been some rumors that Cleveland might trade Francisco Lindor, maybe to the Dodgers. Unless we get a huge ass return, I would like to avoid that. Along with Corey Kluber, he's the face of the franchise, and his power numbers seem to keep going up a little each season.

I know the idea going around is that our window to win is closed or just about to close, but looking at our free agents now and who we still have, I think we can still contend for the division in 2020, barring a bunch of injuries (see: 2019).