Sports Are Frustrating

But more to the point, sports fans are frustrating. Everyone loves to argue about sports, that's one of the fun parts of watching grown men play childrens games. What bothers me is that no one knows as much as they think they do (myself included) yet everyone expresses their opinion as if it's absolute fact, when most of the time theyre wrong. And the people who argue the loudest are usual the most clueless. A few weeks ago I was in Atlantic City and a guy from New York railed for a solid twenty minutes telling us why Derek Jeter was by far the best player in baseball. This is a ridiculous statement, and I'm a Yankees fan, I love Derek Jeter. There was no convincing this man otherwise. It never ceases to amazing how otherwise rational people let their biases take over when it comes to sports. I understand being passionate, I almost threw a chair at a friend once when we got into an argument over whether or not Koy Detmer was an asshole (I say yes by the way). I guess what I'm saying is that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but a lot of fans seem to lack objectivity and if that's the case keep your opinion to yourself, you're probably wrong. Also if you can't express without being douche bag about it just don't say anything.

Here is another sports fan phenomenon that gets to me, bandwagon jumping. I don't mean in the traditional sense of changing your allegiance to a team based on their success or lack thereof. Although that is annoying too, I've never seen more Red Sox fans than right around the beginning of spring training in 2005. Then again, like I said earlier, I'm a Yankee fan so it's not like I haven't been accussed of this a million times over. The sense that I mean bandwagon jumping is when people jump onto someone else ideas and run with them, and try to pass of these idea as there own. Oh Notre Dame is overrated cause there defense is bad huh, USC won't be good this year because they lost to many players to the NFL. Guess what, it's college football and USC is a football factory, you don't think they've reloaded again already. You're sick of the media talking about T.O.? Well I'm sick of people saying how their sick of hearing about T.O., and the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry be covered all the time, and whining about East Coast bias, and Barry Bonds, and steriods, and all the other stories that are covered to death. I don't want to hear about these stories either, they're vapid and redundant, but so is everyone in America expressing that fact. ESPN's main goal is ratings I think, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how the stay in business. I would guess that they cater to what people want to see, not try to force feed us stories that they think are interesting. When I see a story about T.O. you know what I do? Change the channel. And when i see an article online, I just don't read it. The problem is that while people have had enough of these stories they continue to watch in order to have something to complain about. If everyone stopped talking about T.O. we'd probably stop hearing about him. Also the Tigers are not going to win the World Series, get over it. They're 28-30 against teams currently in playoff contention, and that's only because they're 10-5 against the Twins, who waited until late June to start playing well. By comparison, the White Sox are 29-24, the Yankess are the same. The Tigers are 26-4 against the Royals and the national league. They have an excellent pitching staff, but you don't get to face the Royals in the playoffs. The Tigers don't walk, don't have a high on base percentage, and strike out a lot. Which means they don't work the opposing starter and don't get into the bullpen early. Which is absolutely crucial to playoff success. The also have a closer with an ERA pushing 5. That's a scary propositon in those tight playoff games. All this leads me to believe, in my opinion, that the Tigers, if they do make the playoffs, won't have a lot of success. And Arod is very good at baseball.

There are a lot of people who have an amazing knowledge of sports and it's intricacies. I'm probably not one of them. But there are a lot more people who have no idea what they're talking and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is when some jackass who thinks he's Peter Gammons, John Clayton, and Chad Ford all rolled into one. I don't have a problem having an opinion, it's not be open to someone possibly changing you're mind thats the problem.

Basically here is what I would like to happen, because everyone loves to ride these opinions, and I like to go the opposite route. I want the Tigers to miss the playoffs, even though it really is a good story and they have a likeable team. I want to the Red Sox to make a miraculous comeback to win the wildcard, just so we can here a lot of great stories about the best rivalry in sports. But I want them to lose to the Yankees in the ALCS because everyone still hates the Yankees more. Then I want to see a subway series with the Mets so we get bombarded with stories about how great New York is. I want T.O. to have 2,000 yds recieving all the while talking about how he is underpaid and hates Bill Parcells and the rest of the team, except for Mike Vanderjagt. I want the Packers to go 11-5 and Brett Favre to play for 3 mores years. But then the Redskins have to play the Colts in the Super Bowl. But only if Peyton Manning throws for 500 yds and 12 touchdowns in the NFC Championship game against the Patriots. Notre Dame wins the BCS title game 17-6, only winning because of a stellar defensive effort. Also J.J. Redick should score 15 ppg his rookie year and Duke should win it all. It would be fun if Micheal Vick had an amazing pro bowl caliber year while spreading herpes in every city he visits. I still don't want Barry Bonds to break the home run record though. That guys a dick.

I realize that I just wrote an entire posts doing the very thing I complain about in the post. You, my reader, probably think I'm an asshole. Whatever, shut up, I hate you. Just kidding, I love you, you know I can't stay mad.