I’m a pretty dedicated sports fan. Sundays during the fall, I’ll watch 10 straight hours of football, followed by an hour of highlights, followed by bed, followed by a naughty dream with colour commentary by Cris Collinsworth. (He never fails to call me out for my sloppy technique.) In spring, I’ll flip from hockey to basketball to other hockey to baseball, risking marriage and thumb cramps to stay abreast of five to seven games at once.
But there are lines that even a hard-core sports enthusiast should not cross—events that even a devoted fan should at all costs avoid.
1. Exhibition games. These things are the worst. They resemble the sport you like, but they’re a pale substitute. It’s like tuning in to 30 Rock and Liz walks into the office and—boom—Stephen Baldwin.
A decade ago, I paid actual money to attend an NHL pre-season game. I sat in the seventh row—just close enough to the ice to contract a case of third-degree lackadaisical. Even today I suffer relapses. For instance, this sentence was supposed to contain an Alexei Yashin joke but, meh (uninterested shrug).
Think of it this way: If we agree that the hockey, basketball and baseball seasons are so long that the games that matter barely matter, then it follows that the games that don’t matter actually matter even less than not mattering. They negative matter. So by paying to see pre-season hockey, you’re not just wasting time—you’re wasting anti-time.
Congratulations, nitwit, you just made the universe explode.
2. Drafts. The week before any big-league draft is pretty hard to take. That’s when every loudmouth in your workplace or carpool regurgitates what he heard on sports radio about who should go where.
Some Guy: “Cody Ceci should be a top-10 pick!” Some Other Guy: “Cody Ceci is overrated and a defensive liability!” Total combined number of seconds these guys spent watching Cody Ceci play, ever: zero.
And what about the poor people who are somehow cajoled into attending the draft in person? After the first few picks, you are no longer expressing support for your favourite team. You are just sitting in a quiet arena, drinking an $11 beer and staring at Glen Sather’s bald spot.
3. Trade deadline and free-agent-signing-day broadcasts. Why spend 45 seconds reviewing the day’s activity when you can devote nine hours to watching TV personalities yearn for something, anything, even the sweet relief of a quick death, to save them from having to listen to another time-killing anecdote about Scotty Bowman?
4. All-Star Games. I caught about five minutes of the 2012 Pro Bowl on TV. So many people on the screen were going through the motions that the game is now being marketed on DVD as the fourth Matrix movie.
5. Schedule release day. Exactly when did this become a thing? My local paper just published an extensive list of the can’t-miss NHL games of 2012–13. Am I supposed to commit this to memory? Scrapbook it? Guys, it’s early summer: I think I can muddle through a few more months of not knowing when the Coyotes have that critical six-game road swing.
When the NFL released its 2012 schedule, ESPN responded with a three-hour prime-time special. Panels were convened, video clips amassed, and countless adjectives deployed—all to inform us that games five months from now that look as though they’ll be good games will probably be good games. THANK YOU FOR THAT PENETRATING INSIGHT. In other news, TimTebowTimTebowTimTebowTimTebow.
The sports media want us to accept that pro sports are now worth following and caring about 12 months of the year. But I like sports to end and then disappear for a while. The coming back is important, but so is the going away.
Scott Feschuk: Sporting events that create comas
