Shame On Professional Football
My blog is free of professional sports 99.9% of the time. But I must post my thoughts over what the football leagues did on Christmas Day.
Before I start, it is only fair to say I am not a football fan. My father and I remarked a few weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon, as we were both reading the Sunday papers, that neither one of us had ever watched an entire football game on TV. Football was not a part of my growing up experience, and I feel just fine as a result. As an adult I have no loyalty to any team, and am always at a loss as to what to say when some people mope around on Monday morning because their favorite team lost a game on Sunday afternoon. And like my mom and dad I too don’t like to see 60 Minutes delayed on a Sunday night as the final quarter of a football game is finished on CBS. When I lived in northeast Wisconsin folks would talk about the glory days of the Green Bay Packers and for many it seemed as if time for them had stopped. It was rather sad to see. I was never able to relate to their conversations of a certain play in a football game decades earlier that somehow seemed heroic to them.
But is was on Christmas afternoon that I was floored when I finally turned on the television and found that the NFL were playing games on a Holiday. The idea that Christmas might be reserved for family and home seems to be old fashioned for the greedy bastards who own the teams, set the season football schedule, or who market the games on the broadcast networks. The millionaires who play the game on Christmas may not be fazed about missing the Holiday, but I suspect the folks on the other end of the salary spectrum who are parking attendants and janitors might feel different. The idea that Christmas might be held as a special day for our nation, and not subjected to the same crass commercialization that led up to the Holiday, seems too much to hope for. The fact that the football leagues could not schedule their season without ruining Christmas for many Americans shows that family values are in short supply in professional sports.
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I’m sure that Deke could’ve created numerous posts on the greed we have on holidays. I happen to agree with him. People watch the game because that’s when it’s on. The NFL knows that football fans will stop family holidays to watch a game. I happen to object because the three jerks in my family that like football won’t listen to the rest of us and come to the table to eat — delaying us all.
Next time it happens, I’m putting my shoe through the TV set.
Deke,
Come on, one could certainly make the same argument for every Saturday and Sunday game.
If there’s a football game and no one watches it, do they still play?
I think most of us have this aversion to the greed of the holiday season. Why, with you was it football. I went to a movie Xmas Day, and looking at the long lines there certainly was a degree of greed involved. My point being there is a thousand points of greed this past holiday season and what came to the fore for you was football.
Regarding Edited, (and you should be ashamed that your “name” had to be edited)
I am not hostile towards pro football. If you were not such a poor reader you would have grasped the fact that I was objecting to the greed that is at the root of playing a game on Christmas Day. Among my friends I can say we all agree the bastards that put football on TV on Christmas are just greedy. Now how about taking a class on reading comprehension.
This is a terrible post. If you think something on TV intrudes on Christmas, don’t turn on the TV. It sounds like the writer is just hostile toward pro football. There were far worse things on TV on Christmas Day including porno movies, bad soap operas, trashy court shows, and gangsta rap. The list is endless. You can choose to let those things ruin your Christmas, or you can choose to control your emotions regardless of what someone else is doing.
In 1961 the NFL moved the 1961 championship game from Sunsday Dec 25 to Minday Dec 26 so not to interfer with the celebration. When I was growing up I remember my uncles carrying the huge black and white tvs from the living room into the kitchen on Thanksgiving because the Packers were playing. Today we have football on Christmas night because the demand is there. TImes change, the games were on late enough in the day when many people are ready to relax after a very hetic day.
I like football or at least I used to like football, but in interferes with family holidays and now I’m mad. We actually delayed Thanksgiving dinner two years ago because the Bears were playing late. I haven’t watched a game or paid attention since. What’s the point? Those players should be home with their families, not playing football. I don’t watch college games for the same reason. These college boys need family time, not football.
I’m going to have to strongly disagree with this. On one hand, the whole NFL Network thing I think is essentially a money and power grab by the NFL, because they stand to make a mint if they can get the cable networks to go along with the scheme.
But the scheduling of games is something entirely different. The NFL is not going to just randomly schedule games unless they think people WANT to watch them at the time they are on. They must have had a reason to believe that the “parking attendants and janitors” WANTED something in the background as they visited with each other at Christmas (just like at Thanksgiving), and if my family was any indication, they were absolutely correct. In fact, I bet you have it completely backwards. I bet the players would much rather be at home, and just to be sure I’d be fine if they were. But the NFL obviously saw a demand for this, and delivered, despite the wishes of the players and coaches.
The ratings will tell if my family was an anomaly. As you say, though, you’re not a football fan, so I’d say it’s much more likely that it is in fact your thinking that is an anomaly.