Why sports makes me sad now

 The Eagles are 2-0. The Phillies are likely going to the playoffs. The Sixers have the reigning MVP. I have just enough time and scratch to see the games that I really want to see.

So why am I not writing about sports, liking them quite so much, and just dealing with The Sad far too much?

Listicle!

1) Fantasy sports. Let's face it, folks: these have ruined sports irrevocably, and that comes from someone who has played them since you kept stats with a pen and paper and mailed standings to people. But like the dismissed hot water in a pot, a slow degradation is still a degradation. So much coverage of games isn't about game, but numbers -- and, well, bored with it. No one cares about your fantasy team but you, and if your team isn't great, it's just a reason for sad. A reason you can't stop caring about, but really, probably, should, and the main reason for the second item on our list.

2) No one has any patience or faith. The Eagles have gotten very lucky with turnovers, haven't shown good play calling, and are clearly not on the level that they were last year. And at this time last year (because the Minnesota game last year was on a Monday), they weren't either.

The NFL season is too long and too important, and injuries matter more than nearly any other factor. Philly finished their week 2 game with street meat in the secondary against the best WR in the league, but since QB Jalen Hurts is beloved for reasons and not looking like the guy who played the position last year, we're going to pule until we get what we want, as if puling ever, really... gets you what you want. Tiresome. The people gripping about the team this year seem like they are more gripping about their QB1 and WR1 (Hurts and Brown) not playing up to statistical expectations. Beyond tiresome. 

3) The Sixers. The end of the last Sixers season didn't just, as usual, make me want to not watch any more of the Sixers. It also made me not want to watch any more of the NBA.

This is a league that's impossible to officiate, where the game looks like statistical analysis of three pointers or dunks has made every other shot obsolete, and superstars routinely game the system to be de facto GMs. It's also one where Boston is better then Philadelphia, and almost always has been, and the team is trying to destroy a neighborhood to build a new and unnecessary arena in a minority residential area, further worsening affordable housing. It's also one that is being held hostage -- again -- by a star player who can't show up in the playoffs and does not want to play for the team. Oh, and they are also owned by people who have became incredibly more wealthy from their relatively incompetent ownership of the team. 

Who needs more of this in their lives?

4) Rich people. The older I get, the more I'm convinced that (a) I'm never going to have financial comfort or independence, (b) no one is every going to care about that but me, and (c) rich people really need to be reminded that guillotines exist and should be paramount in their minds, especially if they don't pay their goddamn taxes like, well, all of us in camps A and B. Every owner of a team is a rich person, the vast majority of which come from legacies of wealth, and a legacy of wealth also means your ancestors probably did many people wrong and let you grow up in a world where that kind of thing isn't just expected, but encouraged.

So. I'm spending my time and money watching and writing about the activities of rich and unsympathetic people distracting us all from the very real things that we need to do to prevent the mass deaths of most of the world's population from climate change. And with football, there's also brain trauma and death, while you watch what the comic actor and former NFL player Terry Crews call "prison with money." Go team.

5) The unsympathetic people aren't just the owners. Players often inflict not just politics, but politics based on thougtlessness, narcissicism and grievance on the public and remind me that the freedom to speak one's mind doesn't mean you, well, have one. And I suppose better out than in and it's good to know who the idiots are, but the temptation to join the Shut Up and Play crowd, all while really not wanting to join the Shut Up and Play crowd... who are also, well, terrible.

Want to feel kinship with the fan base? Don't listen to sports radio, read the comments, or go to games, because you'll likely be subject to their terrible opinions. You might also have ones of your own, of course.

I know, I know, I'm just being a crank and letting personal issues that have me on tilt from other areas of my life ruin this... but if you had your life to live again and knew all that you knew now, would you choose to be a sports fan? It takes a lot of time, costs a lot of money, and doesn't really give you great bang for your buck. My adult children aren't fans, and I don't care or feel like this has held them back. 

So if you wouldn't choose to do it again, why choose to do it now? Because inertia, because structure, because the absence of them wouldn't actually make my life better, or get anyone to take climate change or taxation of the obscenely wealthy more seriously or effectively. 

I'm complicit. So are you.

Yay, team!