If I have learned anything over my years on this earth, it is that life is a giant mental fuck. Feelings of acceptance are often followed by feelings of self-consciousness; with achievement comes an almost unhealthy amount of responsibilities, and with joy comes an unrealistic goal of maintaining the emotion. Similarly, sports starts follow the same trend. No one knows a bench warmer until he starts showing a relentless drive that leads to wins, championships, and accolades. After finally reaching the level that he knew he could achieve, he is thrust into the spotlight where the media turns his life into a living documentary. Knowing that each movement might lead to a minor mistake that gets magnified beyond considerable recognition creates a self induced stigma that each minor blemish is unforgivable. When an individual or a team wins, they must utilize their publicity for the greater good of the world. As a humanitarian, I believe that we must continue to shed light on monstrosities that exist, but why is it that “wins” equal “perfect role models”?
Michael Phelps was caught smoking weed. Besides some of these crazy Southern right wingers who know nothing of the world besides God and goats, everyone has tried it at least once. Shit, it’s decriminalized in certain states and will continue to be pushed forward until it is eventually legalized.
The most exalted and at the same time foolish aspect of life is the setting of unhealthy expectations for winners competing at the top level. The Yankees have a few years without a World Series, boom, coach is released. The Cowboys have a year that deviates from their standard level of excellence, boom, coach is released. The most recent situation involves the US soccer coach Bob Bradley. Is it the coach or the youth training programs that are the issue with US soccer? Last year, the US men’s soccer team had a top moment when Landon scored in extra time. By no means do I think that they should have been celebrated as being successful, since they did not even place at the world cup (Isn’t that the goal?), but they were given praise and yet the coach was fired. Either way, when you win, that joy can be short lived to such an extent that heads roll after a minor hiccup.
Why am I discussing this? Because the NFL season is finally upon us after dealing with a tumultuous lockout and the 3 off-field aspects of sports that I mentioned above are dominating the US’ golden egg. This is going to be my first segment of many; each week I’ll provide insight into each game.
Each sport has had its moment in the sun and the NFL at this point has completely taken over. I will follow this post up with a breakdown of each team and potential outlooks complemented by an on-field fantasy NFL league followed by reports on the off-field, illegal and classless behavior of today’s top players in the NFL and beyond. Each week will include predictions of the potential winners, scaled by how much money I believe should be put down per my theory. I am not always going to be right, but goddammit, I will make it enjoyable.
I'll keep you posted.
Here’s to Man’s Ambition to be the last football player standing when that whistle blows in January.
-Kyle
No comments:
Post a Comment