Recent years have seen much of the joy removed from watching and following many sports, from Major League Baseball, to college football and basketball, to the NFL.
College sports, at least on the men’s side, have become nothing more than semi-pro leagues, filled with mercenary players whose recruitment and retention is based more on Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) payments and the sort rather than allegiance to the school.
Perhaps you’ve heard that one of the Deion Sanders progeny, a college football player, is in the midst of a bankruptcy case having to do with a judgment against him, and is in the courts pleading to keep his NIL deals nonpublic.
Ohio State, which plays for the national college football title Monday night, is widely reported to be the team that $20 million in NIL funds put together.
In a bit of hypocrisy, I probably will watch at least some of the Ohio State-Notre Dame game. But my appetite for college sports in general is far from what it once was.
It is the same, sad story, all about the bucks, with other sports enumerated above.
My viewing solution is to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. And that is why my experience with the Kansas City-Houston NFL playoff game Saturday was a brief one.
Once the first questionable officiating call in favor of the Kansas City Swifts was made, a phantom personal foul penalty against a Houston defender for breathing on KC quarterback Patrick Mahomes, it was time to leave the broadcast for other diversions lest my television succumb to a thrown remote.
Having covered sports for a living during much of my 35 or so years in journalism, I used to chuckle at fans who were quick to blame officials for their teams’ failures. Not that I never encountered what I thought was officiating bias. It’s just it was not nearly as apparent on a widespread basis when one had no rooting interest in the outcome.
I checked the score periodically on that eventual Chiefs win yesterday, just to be sure my initial assessment had been correct, and then watched the entire Washington-Detroit nightcap without anything happening that caused me to think the invisible hand was weighing on the scales to benefit either side.
It also was interesting to scan various internet feeds, both yesterday and today, and find there is much being written about apparently bad calls favoring the KC Swifts.
No less a source than Troy Aikman, who was on the game broadcast team, is reported to have lamented with fervor a questionable penalty against Texas for hitting Mahomes while he was sliding. This happened after I’d stopped watching.
“Oh, come one,” Aikman reportedly said. “I mean, he’s a runner. I could not disagree with that one more. He barely gets hit.”
Yo, Troy, it is in the best interest of the NFL ratings and general interest to have Mahomes and crew continue in the playoffs, the better to allow gratuitous shots of Taylor Swift cheering for paramour Travis Kelce, AKA Mr. Swift, who catches a lot of passes from Mahomes and presumably Taylor is OK with it.
We should be empathizing with Swift, a prominent Kamala supporter who could have used some officiating help to turn that one into a winner.
Back to the NFL, if you think the product on sale here is competition and football, you are a tad naive. Consider all the WOKE platitudes that still adorn many helmets and the edges of the playing fields.
Were this latest KC game an isolated instance, it could be overlooked. But favorable officiating for the Swifts, which in this game included Swift boy pal Kelce not being flagged for celebrating over a fallen defender, a staple of the NFL these days, was hard to ignore.
Throughout the years, the Swifts seem to have gotten do-overs when plays failed at first, kid glove treatment for their stars, and the general nod on close calls. KC has a great program and really shouldn’t need the help.
Yet, we ask, could all involved be fair and pure as the driven snow that pelts my house as I write this Sunday afternoon? Sure. Could there be a bias, either stated or implied, to give the Swifts the benefit of the doubt? That seems to be possibility.
Either way, it’s annoying to watch. Hopefully, today’s NFL playoff games unfold with less controversy. But, if they do not, there is an abundance of options to otherwise invest the time that would have been spent watching it all.
Sam Ross Jr's site 