I am a big sports fan. I love the NFL and have been a fan of the Oakland Raiders all my life. In fact, at age 8, I received a Kenny Stabler football uniform for Christmas. The NFL has always been a part of my life and I look forward to it every year. I love the fall season as it turns into finals and soccer is a big part of that for me. So it is with sadness that I have seen professional sports in this country become totally neutral and a joke for any intelligent fan to watch.
However, it seems that the NFL is becoming more like the NBA in that the players play and the referees decide. The players no longer decide who wins the match on their own merits, the referees do. It’s disgusting to see when EVERY game contains multiple – ghost pass interference calls. Peyton Manning has another chance to score because he took a hit to the head: he’s wearing a helmet! Touchdowns are removed every game by some new rule that is not a rule and all old rules are ignored or interpreted differently. Lost fumbles where it obviously wasn’t a fumble, but it sticks because the team ran out of challenges. If you look at the games like me, you see this in every game. Refs on reproducing and over analyzing to the point where it is no longer a game, but a war of interpretation of rules. You can’t even look at a quarterback anymore without getting fined and a 15-yard penalty, and games are frequently decided late on pass interference. Just ask Pittsburgh’s James Harrison how he feels about the $100k he’s earned this year alone.
Yeah, winning the games for superior athletic ability, skill, training, planning, those days are gone. Now, if the referees interpret the decisions in favor of their teams, they COULD win. Or if your team contains a superstar player. For example, if Ed Reed or Ray Lewis hit hard, then they are great ‘wreckers’. But if an Oakland Raider hits, well, the Raiders are a dirty team that takes a lot of penalties.
Perhaps it was repetition and technology that changed games forever, but now, like basketball, soccer has become a game where he who gets the most calls wins. You do not believe me? It started with the ‘tuck rule’ a few years ago when the Patriots got a spot in the Super Bowl. Watch Kobe or Lebron shoot 15-20 foul shots a game, EVERY game if you have any doubts. Oh, and now, if you complain, you’ll get a technical foul and be ejected after two, so fans can pay huge, expensive ticket prices to watch the players on the bench play.
It costs an average family of 4 members $450 to watch an NFL game. Now, instead of watching the game, you can spend that money to watch an umpire stick his head under a hood and interpret a rule you didn’t even know existed. What a thrill!
Along with this, there is likely to be a lockout between owners and players. Millionaires vs. billionaires deciding what to do with money from a game that isn’t even a real game anymore.
Maybe watch hockey…