Nearly a full year has passed since I moved to Southern Indiana. I decided to do so without the benefit of satellite TV or cable in my new place. Originally, this decision was met with skepticism. Most people who knew me said I wouldn’t last a month or two without it. Their lack of confidence usually centered around my inability to exist without my sports channels.
This was a valid point. I knew that between Hulu.com and Netflix I could see just about everything I wanted to as far as TV series went, but I am (and most likely always will be) a sports nut. So how would I do without the ESPN channels, Comcast Sports Chicago, MLB TV, Versus and the 30 or so other regular stops on my Directv settings? After all, I watched SportsCenter almost daily, TiVo’d “Pardon the Interruption” and spent hours watching whatever they wanted to put on the MLB network.
Almost a year later, I have to say I am still functioning. I have shown no major withdrawal symptoms and am in fact leading a normal life. In fact, I enjoy sports more now than I did before, and in a quarter of the time. Let me explain.
Seeing live sports on the internet is fairly easy. ESPN3.com shows live events from the ESPN networks and a lot of events that don’t make TV. The rest I can find other places on the web. I do pay for the MLB and NBA online packages to watch games, but those add up to a grand total of three months or so of Directv, so over the course of a year I come out way ahead. Soccer can be picked up in about a hundred places, as can the NFL. Seeing games and events live is just as easy as it was when I had the satellite.
So where do I save all this time and still enjoy sports more? By only watching live events, I’ve saved my ears hours of battering from all the chatter.
It wasn’t until I was away from these channels for a while that I really noticed it. I’d say it was about halfway through the NFL season last year. I remember being in my gym, which has TVs scattered around the walls, with the TV in the free weight area always tuned to ESPN. I looked up and saw one of the many editions of SportsCenter on it. The TV was on mute but as ESPN viewers know you can follow the stories with the crawls and side-of-the-screen graphics ESPN seems to love so much. The big topic today was Player X on Team X had “called out” his teammates by saying they weren’t playing hard enough. This came from one sentence the player had said during one interview after one game. ESPN decided this Shakespearean moment of betrayal necessitated an entire segment and three “experts” to fully grasp the enormity of the situation. The experts discussed whether player X had “lost his teammates” and whether player X should be traded, and where the team would go from there (and I could tell even on mute since the graphics read, in turn “HAS X LOST HIS TEAMMATES?” “SHOULD PLAYER X BE TRADED?” and “WHERE DOES TEAM X GO FROM HERE?”).
Why am I calling the player X and referring to the team as Team X? Because I don’t have the slightest hope of remembering which player on which team caused this moment of panic in the ESPN studios. Because, as you may have already guessed, in the grand scheme of the season, absolutely none of this mattered. The team didn’t collapse, the other players on the team didn’t even bother to comment as they knew this was a flippant response right after a frustrating loss, and it didn’t actually mean anything. Another reason is that ESPN does this type of overkill coverage of meaningless stuff all the time, and after a while these alleged “turning point” moments all blend together and proceed to travel in one ear and swiftly out the other.
Still, SportsCenter has hours of programming time to fill, and as I watched the side scroll (which lists the topics coming up that will be discussed) I realized just how much pure fluff goes into sports coverage on TV. It’s hours and hours of “experts” speculating endlessly and making meaningless predictions. None of these people are held remotely accountable for what they say. They contradict themselves day to day without anyone questioning them about it. Their constant predictions are not accompanied by any data on how their past predictions have fared (and believe me they all could have data a mile long if they wanted it since “who will win the X division in X sport” is one of their go-to time wasters). In fact, so much chatter goes by so quickly it’s almost impossible for a viewer to keep track of it all, which may in fact be the point. It’s simply distraction from the fact that they don’t have enough real show to last an hour, and if they admitted that, well then you wouldn’t be around to watch the ads.
I’m dubious about the quality of these predictions and analysis anyway, mostly because it’s given by a parade of suit-clad ex-coaches who were fired for not knowing enough about how to win in their particular sport in the first place, or retiree coaches and players picking up a paycheck for tossing out a couple of clichés a few times a week. Their televised shouting matches that pass for pregame shows or expert commentary mean nothing. It’s all just air. And I find I enjoy sports without these bozos clogging up my ear canals.
I still catch some of these shows when visiting home or a friend’s place and it’s remarkable how often I’ll see them making dire predictions and speaking of how someone has lost their touch or how one victory or loss by a certain team means an entire division will be in upheaval and say to myself, “they’re calling that a big deal?”
By only watching the live events and reading the occasional wrap from the Chicago Tribune site, I simply enjoy what’s happening on the field of play. I’m not bogged down with phony outrage or mindless speculation. I just watch what’s happening and if something strikes me, I form my own opinion about it. Sports are supposed to be fun, and the “paralysis by analysis” style of “breaking down” (another irritating sports phrase) the minutiae was taking some of that away from me. I just didn’t realize it until I removed myself from it.
It has also added hours to my weeks as I don’t spend time sifting through these shows. I’ve read more books and done more writing (it’s funny to me how often early drafts of blog posts are written in the evening hours when I’d usually be watching SportsCenter and PTI). I’d call that’s a pretty good trade-off.
So sports fans, give it a try sometime. Skip the pregame and postgame shows and hang out with a friend, read a book or listen to some good music. You’d be surprised how much more enjoyable the actual games can be.
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