My sports fanhood has changed quite a bit over the last four-plus years.
Most of that has to do with working for this newspaper and covering various Wisconsin sports. I grew up less than an hour from Madison with parents who—even if they couldn’t keep up with 8-year-old Parker the sports nerd—graduated from UW-Madison and had plenty of cardinal and white around.
I either remember the Badgers winning the 1994 Rose Bowl or watched the VHS enough times that it seems like I do. I woke up everyone in my house when Matt Schabert, Jim Sorgi’s backup, threw an 79-yard touchdown to Lee Evans against Ohio State in 2003.
There was no learning how to be a Badger fan when I got to campus, but there’s been plenty of un-learning. Not that pride in the university goes away or anything like that, but covering any team for long enough will knock the patronizing back a bit.
I’ve always watched sports—football in particular—in an analytical way, but analysis and objectivism aren’t the same thing. The closer you get to a combination of the two, the better your copy tends to be.
Being a Wisconsin boy, the Packers have become my outlet. I’ve always considered the corner of Oneida St. and Lombardi Ave. the center of the universe, but since I’ve been in college Packers games have been my chance to stop taking notes and tracking drives in the press box and just yell at the television, “JERMICHAEL, FOR ONCE JUST CATCH THE...” well, you get the idea.
It’s really a refreshing thing that a Packers loss still makes doing Sunday night homework unpleasant, just like it did in grade school.
I didn’t have to take a nap before the 2010 Super Bowl like I did in 1996 so I could stay up late and watch the whole game, but I promise you I was just as nervous the second time around.
But Monday night, when the dust settled and the pile dispersed and, eventually, a Seahawks’ extra point officially ended a 14-12 Packers loss in Seattle, it was totally different.
I saw the stats about the percentages of teams that start 1-2 and make the playoffs (doesn’t happen that often) and, like everyone, thought the Packers got robbed of a win that could definitely mean something down the road. And, yeah, I was mad about it for a few minutes.
Far more quickly than I would have liked, though, it turned to ambivalence. I’ve never not cared about a Packers loss, but it happened this week.
There have been thousands and thousands of words dedicated to this conversation about replacement referees the last few days—at least a good proportion of them of the four-letter variety—so I’ll try not to rehash too much of it.
It’s not like sports fans are oblivious to the money machines that professional (and now a lot of college) sports leagues have become in the last couple decades. Ticket prices and $100 million contracts are regular reminders.
But it’s not often that fan bases get slapped in the face by that quite as squarely as National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell and his office has pulled off in the last three weeks.
It’s one thing to lock out the players during the offseason and have people fret over whether or not a preseason game will get cancelled, like 2011. Everybody knew that would get solved because game revenues were at stake.
This time, the labor issues with referees dragged into the regular season because, even if it’s been obvious we’re watching an inferior product, at least we’re watching.
It’s not that hard to keep fans happy. We let the league charge exorbitant prices and we hardly raise an eyebrow when we see Drew Brees received a $40 million signing bonus on SportsCenter while we pay five times more for ESPN than we do for any other cable channel.
We all know that at the end of the day, the NFL is a profit-driven business and a huge one at that. But we invest ourselves in it because throwing and catching a pigskin is one of the only things more American than the entrepreneurial might that made the league the powerhouse it is.
Except it’s not Goodell’s job to see it that way. Bargaining positions are more important than defensive formations. Profits are more important than points. We all know it’s true and it’s just business. But seriously, you could do a little better job handling it.
The U.S. Congress and super PACs on both sides of the isle give us plenty of reason for cynicism. We don’t need football to be hard to enjoy.
By Thursday morning, a deal might be struck with the real referees. It won’t change how I think about this whole thing. You have to touch a hot stove once, so they say, but that doesn’t mean the third-degree burn won’t still be there under the oven mitt the next time you reach for the stove.
If I get back from Lincoln, Neb. in time to watch the Packers on Sunday, I will. I’m not done with the NFL. I just wish the league wouldn’t remind me of its true intentions so often.
Will you stop watching the NFL until the real refs are back? Do you now see the NFL in a different light? Let Parker know by emailing him at pgabriel15@gmail.com.
