Thursday, April 06, 2006

Real sports stories: a nation turns its hungry eyes to you

Big news today! The NFL released its 2006 schedule. Talking heads are atwitter; there's plenty of online discussion. People are excited.

Of course, each team has known the opponents for 14 of its 16 games in 2006 for several years. The other two games were determined immediately after last season. The only thing we learned today is when those games will be played.

Let's face it; we're addicted to football, and will take any chance to discuss football we can. But this isn't news.

Last night on ESPN News, the "Breaking News" box in the corner informed us that Barry Bonds went 0 for 1. That was there "breaking news"; that was apparently the most important thing going on in sports last night. A baseball player went 0 for 1.

And finally, we have rape allegations and all sorts of other sordid things going on with the Duke Lacrosse team. How many people have watched a Lacrosse game or know much about it or care about it at all? How many of you follow college Lacrosse? The only thing I know about Lacrosse is that "you don't score until you score." I'm not even sure I know how to spell Lacrosse. I'm not saying rape allegations aren't serious business, but this story seems tangental to the sporting world. There are ramifications about gender, race, class, and privilege--but would these ramifications be terribly different if a random fraternity was going through the same allegations? I don't know.

But this is the news we get.

No comments:

Post a Comment