Pro? Football

What's wrong with Pro-Football? Well, there are the obvious irritations from the sidelines, but those can be muted. How about the criminal rehabilitation teams in the league? Those are teams who take millionaire criminals who have been suspended and rehabilitate them. Most still act like criminals. Then there are the players with ghetto mentalities who think the game is all about them. These gifted and highly skilled athletes are not satisfied to work as part of the team and contribute, they have to pose and gyrate on every play as though they were the only players on the field. Even when they draw repeated penalties for excessive celebration, or un-sportsman like conduct, they seem to be unable to control their behavior. New rule books must be written to attempt to control their 'no rules' approach to the game. Coaches are forced to sidestep these behaviors so that these petulant giants won't quit playing. They have already ruined professional basketball, and now they are ruining professional football. The costs to see these overpaid boobs have risen to the point that a family of four must pay on the average four hundred dollars just for tickets to the game. I for one am refusing to watch. The sport has gotten so bad that referees get more air time than the game. Commercials come so often and last for such a long time that the flow of the game is lost. I feel for those athletes who abide by the rules and play for the team. They are rarely recognized. The idiots on the team seem to get most of the air time. If the games weren't bad enough, the networks feel the necessity to have loud, rude former players comment on every aspect of the game. They apparently failed in elocution lessons and feel the need to talk over each other throughout the broadcast.

Do you realize that in about 40 years, we'll have thousands of old ladies running around with tattoos?

Postponed Aggression

"Wait till I get out of this pool and I'll show you what's funny and what's not."

Sometimes I feel like this old cat looks. Folks just do things that right thinking people shouldn't do, and deep in my soul I feel like I should let them know about it. I hate it when people on the service road ignore the huge yellow yield signs and pinch me off at the exit ramp. I really want to follow them home and ask them to go with me to the Department of Public Safety so they can re-take their driver's test. In the old days I was known to follow people home and ask them some basic questions about civilized behavior. I was not the big Teddy Bear looking animal I am today. Today I know my limitations. I am resigned to glaring at the offenders while assailing them with some of my best, near profanity, euphemisms. "You pencil necked geek!" "You have to be a living brain transplant donor!" "Enroll in the literacy center." It is really stressful not being able to take immediate and decisive action anymore. I never heard my dad use profanity. His favorite expressions were adaptations like "I'll swannee to goodness", and "dadgumit." Being in law enforcement for thirty years nearly ruined me. I was usually able to make the segue from work to home, but on occasion I would slip in the heat of the moment.

I also get riled at people who enter at the "exit" doors of the grocery store and stare at you as you try and push past them to get out. I want to say, "What does 'Exit' mean on your planet?" How about those morons who shift into lower than low gear when you stop to let them walk in front of your car. They actually have the gall sometimes to stop and turn around to address some relative on the sidewalk who can't decide whether to move or stay. They don't know how close they are to being gently nudged by the bumper of my little red jeep. And how about those driving school dropouts who park so crooked that it invalidates the parking space next to them? I have dreams about sitting on their bumpers until they get ready to leave and then breaking out all the lights on their vehicles with a big Buford Pusser hickory limb. They don't realize how lucky they are I have mellowed in my old age. Oh, and all of you folks who think that leaving a shopping cart anywhere on the parking lot is a constitutionally guaranteed right - it's not.

If I could only get a sustained initiative for a month or two and stay on my diet and go to the gym, some of you would reap the whirlwind. But alas, I am less than motivated these days. I can sustain for about a week and then I fall off the wagon. So, unless some of you young bucks step up to the plate, I'm afraid we will be overrun by the "I'm too stupid to be alive" crowd.


All the world's a cage. - Jeanne Phillips

Athletes Awful Behavior

What's wrong with this picture? I guess you could make the case that we are what's wrong. We the fans have excused bad behavior and demanded more superior athletic performance at any cost. It only takes a few bad apples to make the entire basket start to rot. I was never the rabid fan of any sport. I enjoyed watching a variety of events especially when it looked like the participants were giving their all and enjoying the sport. Now, with obscene salaries and purses in almost every sport, the face of athletic performance has changed. Some athletes are willing to sacrifice their health and mental well being for a few years of exceptional play. Sportsmanship is passe, and doing something for the team is rapidly becoming an attribute of the past. We began by dropping the rules so that some athletes who were less than gifted academically could participate for four years in high school, then college. Then we started ignoring the rules of the game and fair play to allow physically gifted athletes, who had never learned how to behave or follow the rules, a chance to "show-off." It is most easily seen in basketball where fouling, palming the ball, double dribbling, and taking four or five steps to the hoop without penalty have become the norm. Football beyond the high school level has deteriorated to a trash talking, unsportsman like, all about me, ghetto freak show. Boxing is abysmal with rare exception from whatever angle you care to look. Even golf is hurting when the really great performers will only play the major events. Drugs of every variety are widely used to enhance physical ability, mask pain, and increase alertness. I still like to cheer for the underdogs and overachievers who win without artificial help. I like coaches who demand discipline, and stress team play. I have stopped watching pro-athletics for the most part because the behavior of some ruins the game for everybody. I don't see it as a problem for our government to address. They have enough behavior problems to address withing the House and Senate to keep them occupied for the remainder of time. But, I do think as fans we could have an impact by refusing to watch, buy tickets, or attend games until changes are made. I think it could be brought back under control, but first we are going to need to exercise self-control.

It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin