Why I Hate Sports

This may come to a shock to some of you, but there’s a part of sports that I hate.  The part that shouldn’t come to a you as a shock is that it has nothing to do with the actual contests.

Mayweather & Pacquiao have been training for a VERY long time for this fight, in just moments they’ll enter the ring. http://t.co/JfJbkiE2G6

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) May 3, 2015

Unless you were hiding under a rock for the last week you’re aware that there was a pretty big boxing match last night.  This was one of the most anticipated fights in recent history that I can remember.  The sport of boxing has fallen from its once great image back in the 20th century.  There hasn’t been a big name to transcend the sport since Mike Tyson.  A lot of people know the two combatants in last nights fight, but for the most part they aren’t as well-known to the general public as past boxers have been.  Part of the problem these athletes have has been brought on by themselves.  Most of them have made poor decisions outside of the right that have landed them in jail and tarnished their image.  The American public doesn’t tolerate domestic violence by its celebrities as much as it once used to.  Boxing is an inherently violent sport, and I for one don’t condone what those athletes have done, but I am also not shocked by anything they have done in their private lives.

The fact that those things happened aren’t the thing I hate about sports.  Ray Rice beating his fiance in an elevator isn’t the thing I hate about sports.  Greg Olsen paying his ex-girlfriend what appeared to be hush money isn’t the thing I hate about sports.  Adrian Peterson beating his child with a switch isn’t the thing I hate about sports.  These are just a few examples of the bad side of sports.  For the most part professional athletes are the exact opposite of what these three examples show.  Note that those are all football players, which is another extremely violent sport.  Again, there should be no surprise that these types of actions come from people who participate in violent sports.  It happens less often, but the domestic violence by professional athletes isn’t limited to the sports that are violent in nature.  An internet search of professional athletes and domestic violence returns over 230,000 results in .38 seconds.  This shows that public is aware of what is being done.  This is still not the part of sports that I hate.

One of the greatest things about sports is that you can choose who you support. There are a multitude of reasons for why you to like the teams you do.  You shouldn’t have to qualify your own fanhood to anyone.  When I look through my timelines on social media there is a wide variety of different fan bases represented and they are all there because I can respect that others have a different point of view than I might.  How boring would it be if I only had friends who saw things exactly as I did?  Some of my best conversations regarding sports have been sparked by the differences in opinion about teams that I have with my contacts.  It happens at all levels of sports too, from high school, to college teams, and into the pros.  I may have similar interests in teams with some on none of these levels, some of these levels, or all of these levels, and across multiple sports like basketball, baseball and football.  One of my favorite things is to see how the colors change along my timeline depending on who’s playing on any particular day.  But this still isn’t the part of sports I hate.

While I like how social media has become a venue for people to debate sports, it is also what I hate about sports.  I respect that everyone is allowed to have their own opinions.  What it doesn’t allow is for people to be rude, crude, and down right mean to others because of their differing opinions.  Those opinions could be about how a game was played, how personnel was used, how the officiating had an effect on the outcome, or the most common “Your team sucks because…..”  It has become all to common for people to post things that are outlandish and ridiculous.  Some of the things I read on social media really make me shake my head in disbelief.  I really hope people are posting these things only to get a rise out of the people they are attacking.  I used to reply to comments made by people who make these crazy comments.  I quickly found that I was just fueling their idiocy by giving them an avenue to spew forth more idiocy, but it was causing me to get caught up in their whirlwind of stupidity.  I would waste a lot time replying to people and proving them wrong with factual information, only to have them continue to reply with more of their opinion.

The first thing I always see when a major sporting event doesn’t go the way someone wants is the conspiracy theory.  Things like the refs were paid off, the league won’t allow team “x” to lose, they always cater to this player and always judge that player harder really get on my nerves.  Yes I understand that you’re upset when your team loses. One of the downsides to the internet is that if you search long enough you can probably find info to support any argument.  The problem is most of that evidence is probably not true.  I hope no one believes professional sports leagues are setting staging their games with a predetermined outcome.  If any of the major sports; football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, auto-racing, golf, boxing, or even tennis, it would destroy them.  Without the credibility of a fair playing field, sports can’t exist.  So until there becomes evidence of cheating happening, please don’t try to convince me that it did.

The other part of social media I dislike in sports is what has become to be knows as trolling.  I do very little to hide my allegiance to my teams.  I follow pages on social media that cover those teams.  I like to read the articles they post, it gives me multiple perspectives on stories are games that my favorite teams participate in.  What I don’t understand is why people who have allegiances to other sports teams feel that is necessary to comment on those articles in a way that have absolutely nothing to do with what the article is about.  Does it really make you feel better about yourself or that your team is more superior because you can alter a photo that countless others have altered to support their  team?  Do you think you’re the first one to come up with that joke?  Do you enjoy it when others do the same to your team?  I for one get frustrated when I go to comment on an article, I mean something actually relevant to what was written, and I get nothing but a bunch of people trying to argue with me by spewing trash at me.  I guess it goes along with the tabloid mentality that seems to be taking over our country.

While I love my sports teams, and I love watching sports in general, I hate what social media has done to the way it is reported.  It has become another place for people to climb their own entitlement ladder.

In the Midst of the Madness

Championship week started last weekend and I am fully engulfed in my favorite sporting time frame.  Last weekend I watched as some small college almost became Cinderella and came close to upsetting their conference power and bursting another school’s bubble.

Watching those small conference championship tournaments are where March Madness pools are won and lost.  Often times when you look at the totality of all entries in those pools the bulk of them have the same six or seven teams in the final four.  It really doesn’t allow for much difference in point scoring in the later rounds of the tournament.  Usually the biggest point differentials happen in the first couple of rounds.  Anyone who’s seriously filled out a bracket sheet knows about the 5/12 match-ups and how successful the lower seed has been historically.  If I’m entering multiple brackets into the same pool one of the differences I be sure to make is on these games.  Since everyone knows of this usual “upset” I don’t really think their upsets anymore.  When I’ve done well in these pools in the past, it’s because I’ve been able to pick more of the other upsets correctly in the early rounds.  By watching and paying attention to these smaller schools you start to get a sense for how they play.  If they have a recent history of reaching the tournament it speaks a little more to how well they might do also.  Coaching styles and game play go a long way in a tournament game where you may have up to five days to prepare for your opponent.  If you know a little bit about what those smaller schools do well on the floor then you are at a distinct advantage.

For the past two years I have ridden Michigan a long way through the tournament.  I actually picked them to win it all in 2013, and had they beaten Louisville I would have turned my $15 investment into a $700 pay-day (need to find more of those).  In 2014 I picked them to lose in the final four, and while I was close, they did score me a lot more points than most people had thought they would.  Unfortunately this year I won’t be able to move them along any brackets, as they won’t qualify for the NCAAs and nobody runs NIT bracket pools.  While this upsets me in the present, I am excited for the future, while being irritated by the past.  This year has been below expectations for me, but not due to the team under performing.  The performance below expectations comes from season ending injuries to two of the players that were going to be major portions of whatever success the Wolverines were going to have this year.  My expectations this year were lower than most fans had for them team this year, and when those injuries did come, a lot of fans started calling foul.  Having had lower expectations to begin with, I talked more than one fan “down from the edge” of what this team really was all along.

My expectations for this year really started to diminish last April.  When it was announced that Mitch McGary had failed an NCAA administered drug test and was going to enter the NBA draft, I knew this season would be difficult.  That would make all five starters from the 2013 National Runner-Up team gone in the first round of the draft within two years.  Only the elite programs around the country could suffer that type attrition and be able to roll on as if nothing had happened.  While Michigan and John Beilein are both good, they are not Kentucky, Duke, Kansas or their elite coaches.  What Michigan did have was a strong core to start building back up towards national prominence.  A lot of young players had gained strong experience due to the two previous years having had such deep runs in the post season.  This was not a team that was returning a bunch of untested players.  That experience with a decent crop of incoming freshman still gave me a sense that this team would be able to compete with the top teams in the Big Ten, and possibly contend for a conference title.  Then the month of December came and they suffered some untimely losses, and after getting over that and seemingly turning things around, the injury bug hit.

This team never gave up though.  They pushed Wisconsin, the elite of the conference, to the brink of upset.  They went into East Lansing and did the same on the road at their biggest rival.  For a stretch of five out of six games this team of back ups was putting a scare into the top-tier of the conference.  Ultimately though, the injury and illness bug would be too much to overcome in the end, as it seemed they would run out of gas in the last couple of minutes of every game.  Three straight games went to overtime after Michigan had a late lead, where they would be out played, mainly because they were too exhausted to be able to continue to compete at the same level they had for the first 40 minutes.  One thing this team never did though was give up.  While all of this was going on, they were able to learn how to play better as a team.  Some of the freshman got more valuable minutes than they would have had McGary not turned pro, or those season ending injuries not occurred.  The best thing that could have happened to this team right now is for them to get a bid to the NIT.  It will allow for those freshmen to get more of those valuable minutes and for the team to better learn how to play together.

Could you imagine though if players couldn’t leave school early for the NBA?  Michigan would be starting Mitch McGary, Glen Robinson III, Nik Stauskas, Caris LaVert, and Trey Burke.  That sounds like the starting line-up of an NBA Futures game.

GO BLUE!