I completely stopped watching or supporting pro sports franchises about 2007 or so and after the initial withdraw period ended I find I don't miss it at all.

The whole thing was getting a bit too cult like for me to be comfortable with anyway, the way some sports fans would so immerse themselves in the identity of "their" team was kinda sad and creepy to watch.

What really started the ball rolling for me was listening to the professional baseball players during their first strike whine about how much they were getting paid to play a game when I was watching my friends and family members destroying their bodies and health in the trades for pennies...

Tack on the way they con taxpayers into paying for their giant stadiums with special accommodations for the elites and my disgust was pretty much complete.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg sized list of reasons to not support the professional sports industries.

If you really wanna watch a game go catch an amateur one, or even better actually go and find some people to play it with rather than enjoy it vicariously.

The plays might not be as 'Big' but the spirit of the game will be more pure as will be the joy of those participating in it.

are just the modern day equivalent of the gladiator games. The only difference is that the poor who surround todays coliseums can't afford to get in to watch the lions get eaten by the saints.

Thanks Big Al. You reminded me of Chomsky from a long time ago, made me think. Here he is quoted on alternet from the Chomsky Reader, my bold and emphasis:

QUESTION: You've written about the way that professional ideologists and the mandarins obfuscate reality. And you have spoken -- in some places you call it a "Cartesian common sense" -- of the commonsense capacities of people. Indeed, you place a significant emphasis on this common sense when you reveal the ideological aspects of arguments, especially in contemporary social science. What do you mean by common sense? What does it mean in a society like ours? For example, you've written that within a highly competitive, fragmented society, it's very difficult for people to become aware of what their interests are. If you are not able to participate in the political system in meaningful ways, if you are reduced to the role of a passive spectator, then what kind of knowledge do you have? How can common sense emerge in this context?

CHOMSKY: Well, let me give an example. When I'm driving, I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief.

become aware
become aware
become aware
I sense a theme

Peace

devotes a chapter to the negative impact of Nike's Michael Jordan ad campaign of "Just Do It." I especially found it convincing and incisive, because it is a treatise on the 80's being ground zero for the narcissism, greed, Get-Rich-Quick schemes, vapid consumerism, prestige, power and self-aggrandizement that still plagues us today (something I firmly believe, and equate to why I also loathe so much of most of the music from then).

An excerpt from the inside binder: "Today's mindless and hyper narcissism, Sirota argues, first became the norm when an 80's generation weaned on Rambo one-liners and "Just Do It" exhortation embraced a new religion - with comic books, cartoons, videogames, and other even children's toys serving as the key instruments of cultural indoctrination."

He really eviscerates Jordan, who could have made enormous impact on underprivileged and besieged young minorities, but instead had the opposite impact, as his deification instilled materialism, hero/money worship, and self-important fantasy.

“You can’t explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don’t have to,” Nike CEO Phil Knight once said, explaining why his company spends three times as much on marketing its heroes as it does on basic capital expenditures. “People already know a lot about him. It’s that simple.”

Whereas we used to merely get our basketball entertainment from the actual Michael Jordan, we now also get our money advice from the Michael Jordans on CNBC and our ideological marching orders from pundit Michael Jordans on MSNBC and Fox News. For everything else, we rely on one of the two Chicagoans to rival Jordan for individual brand dominance: Oprah.

The other Chicagoan, of course, is President Barack Obama–the reigning MVP of a politics and government that was first Jordanized in the 1980s.

Though the grassroots tumult of the 1960s strengthened the notion of collective “people power,” the Jordanization of 1980s society helped permanently solidify America’s political faith in the so-called Great Man Theory of History–i.e., that history is really the story of a few larger-than-life Michael Jordans (or Ronald Reagans, George W. Bushes or Barack Obamas), not mass movements of workmanlike Horace Grants (or local activists). (Grant played third fiddle to teammates Jordan and Scottie Pippen.)

Sirota includes this bit from Vanity Fair writer David Kamp, from an article called "Rethinking the American Dream."

But it was in the 80s that the American Dream began to take on hyperbolic connotations, to be conflated with extreme success: wealth, basically. The representative TV families, whether benignly genteel (the Huxtables on The Cosby Show) or soap-opera bonkers (the Carringtons on Dynasty), were undeniably rich. “Who says you can’t have it all?” went the jingle in a ubiquitous beer commercial from the era, which only got more alarming as it went on to ask, “Who says you can’t have the world without losing your soul?”

Bill Russell would have been an oddity in the 80's.

Right on, Al and everyone here. We've all been heavily indoctrinated into the world of big-time professional sports worship. It is a tough one. I also have many childhood memories tied up inextricably to the baseball diamonds of my youth, in which I played organized ball from age 5 to 18, an All-League shortstop in my junior year of high school. I still have wondrous dreams about running a post pattern, then a flag pattern, and catching those two passes for touchdowns on my JV football team's first win in 3 years. The smell of the autumn grass, the butterflies in the stomach coming off the school bus at the opposing team's field, the bulky padding you never really got used to and the foreboding sense that you could always get really hurt - that all comes back very real. I cherish all these memories, and how central it was to my family life, as we spent all summer at the baseball fields together. At home as a kid watching with Dad was great too.

But I too have given up watching and following, to such an extent that it doesn't even register anymore of what sports are on with each passing seasons, whether it's the start of it or in the playoff mode. I hardly care anymore when I spend the whole day out on a Sunday, ever pausing once to peek in on a game. This for a guy who bought season tickets for the Jets for almost 20 years. My loyalty to them eroded commensurate to my political awakening. The military flyovers, the constant ever present RW jingoism and bigotry in the stands, the growing and enveloping fascist alignment with the military and police. Fuck these people, I thought; they're not my friends. Finding out owner Woody Johnson was a big RW political donor helped seal it for me.
I'm not going backward.

The college game is Way better.