Marathon Man

Well, I enjoyed it while it lasted. I always do. I'm referring to the period in the year when football is NOT on TV. Once it hits it's like Ricky remote kicks into full gear and the TVs are constantly flipping from football to stock car racing to golf, oh, and throw in a little ice skating or tennis if they're available. If he could stay planted in front of the boob tube for the full 48 hours, he'd be in heaven. Ugh!

The only sport I really enjoy watching on TV is baseball because through a myriad of TV cameras is the only way you can actually see what happened. When you're there live, you generally have no clue if the ball is safe, out or foul. And golf, don't get me started. It's tremendously boring when you're face to face with it, stick it on TV and you're then saturated with boredom.

It's like once I hear the familiar and nauseating noise of these crowds, I can't move fast enough to another room. I wish I could build him a man cave in the backyard somewhere and he could just live there all weekend. Then I wouldn't have that sound pollution all over the house. That's the other thing, it doesn't matter if he's in the room or not, he will have all the TVs (four of them) all turned on sports for just in case he comes through the room. I guess this is his version of absolute control over his environment, which is probably the reason I resist it so strongly, it's a tug of war.

I heard a story on NPR on Friday talking about the new computerized helmets they now have for high school football players. Maybe I should say they have them for those few who can afford them as in there are only three high schools who have them currently. So this software monitors the hits a kid takes over the course of the game, practice, anything and I suppose sets off some sort of a warning if they've gone too far, whatever that is. It sounds like a great idea, especially when they share statistics like over 60,000 kids suffered concussions in last year's football season. However, if they've already gotten hit when this computer system registers, exactly what good did that do? Wouldn't you be better off preventing the hit in the first place. I know my logic didn't serve me well in Algebra but it sure is kicking in here. Oh, well, I don't have any boy relatives who are in any immediate danger of knocking themselves out so I won't worry about it at this point.

Now if there was a computer software that actually pushed off the opponent coming at you because you had already taken more than your share of hits, that would be the software for me. What, you think that flies in the face of the whole point of football? Whatever!

See I can't even talk about sports without going down the proverbial rabbit hole. So I'm just going to stop here and make myself comfy. No, I'm actually going to go watch my son-in-law play BASEBALL for the league championship. I can't imagine a more beautiful day for it.

Hasta la vista.