[Two-minute read]
Just home from a gathering of the friends, and now I get to fire up the National Basketball Association Finals. It’s the Knicks, it’s the Spurs, it’s game 2. Game 1 was my second time watching during this playoff run – wait, is that right? – well, in any case, I am trying to limit the amount of time I devote to the watching of televised sport. I do pretty well for a pathological devotee of hockey, baseball, football and basketball on the ‘boob tube’. (Does anybody still call it that? Haven’t heard that expression this century, I do believe.) Not much hockey or baseball anymore, except when the Blue Jays, or I guess any Canadian-based NHL club (thanks, and sorry, Oilers!), make their Big Dance. Football is mainly just the Super Bowl now. Freedom!
My SportsNet feed keeps trying to take me ahead to Spurs-up-7, but I’m gonna watch the whole thing. Okay, I fast-forwarded through the anthem. (Rather attractive young lady, but I’ve heard enough “Banners”; I can hear my sports-centric big sister grumbling about the big pride-of-America hoopla.) And hey, the guy San Antonio had to introduce the Knicks seemed like he was heavily sedated, but for the Spurs, suddenly he was on caffeine, amphetamines and who knows what.
Man, the hype. The game never gets old, but man, the crazed intensity – so much of it performative and rehearsed and amplified, having to outdo the manic fans of days of yore (like, say, way back in March for the Madness) – gotta say, it just, y’know, seems like a lot.
So yeah, I’m watching the NBA. On a sort of television: my laptop screen. (But EVERYTHING IS TELEVISION. If we thought Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death was out of date, consider how our screen addictions have only deepened and multiplied.) And you get to read, Not Quite Live But Surely Of Surpassing and Profound Interest, my random thoughts. Blessings! And peace be upon you and your mind. Further instalments to come. TONIGHT.
[This has been lightly edited since last night; a couple of brief elaborations. Parts Two and Three can be found in the “It’s All About Sports!” section of this site, here and here.]
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The glitz and glamour, the bright lights and the spotlight, the simplicity of live broadcasts and wealth accumulation from in-person attendance, the contrived hype and the financially compensated enthusiasm. I wonder what kind of game would remain if all that disappeared? Would it return to the community court where friends and rivals gather to feign bravado and preen for the gawkers? Or would the game just fade away like so many other boyhood comforts? A memory of yesteryear’s distractions.
Why? There are a lot of whys that could be asked, but many would be simply satisfied by a response of ‘fame’, or ‘fortune’, or ‘idolization’ or ‘atypical compensations’.
The harder why to satisfy is this: “Why do people tune in, follow teams, become fans, adjust life to accommodate engagement?” Each will have their reasonings. Few will dive deeper than simplistic explanations, or confront the pathologies of avoidant behaviour and its distraction from the complexities of life, or to the realities of sedation and inoculation that allows the powerful, however defined, to assert manipulation and control over the masses in an effort to appease their ravenous appetites.
Or is it just a game?
The point is that there is no point.
Watch.
Enjoy.
Looking for that which is not there is a fool’s errand.
But, I cannot help but wonder.
And I have been referred to as a fool before.
Please excuse me. I have another errand to run.
Always love it when Professor Mikey comes to HowdenTown! He makes me think. I dig his phrases: “financially compensated enthusiasm”; “pathologies of avoidant behaviour”; “just a game?” We share a lot of the same ambivalent feelings about sport. (Full transparency: he’s a Leafs fan, which explains a lot.) I enjoyed his commentary on *my* little errands last night!