Stolen Summer Distraction - Fetter21's Blog

Fetter21's Blog

Stolen Summer Distraction

Posted on July 9, 2011 at 02:47 PM.

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This week the US lost to Sweden in women�s soccer, Mexico is all but eliminated from Copa America, and the Seattle Storm are the defending champions of the WNBA. These are all things that I only know because American sports have hit a new all time low. We are now back in a place where baseball is our rock that we cling to for sporting entertainment, and that�s just not a fun place to be.

It�s been said countless times that what when players go on strike or in this case when owners lock out players the only people that really lose are the fans. I know that statement to be true, because right now we are losing out. Zero games have been lost as a causality to this professional sports disaster, but we as fans have already lost out greatly. In the NFL things will eventually get worked out, and in the worst case scenario we�ll miss two preseason games. If anything that�s more of an annoyance to the owners charging full price for those games than to the fans. However it�s not the games that we�re missing, we�re missing our offseasons, we�re missing our mindless drama that gets created while we hope that maybe our team can start to put things together this off season, the analyzation of how will T.O. fit in on his new team this year, and who will create the next NBA Superpower. All of this is our real summer sport forget baseball, that has 162 games making none of them really matter, and allowing most of us to tune out in mid May until we wait for the post season to begin. We want the drama of our NFL and NBA off seasons to give sports fans something to obsess over, something to discuss analyze and debate as a distraction from work and other issues that we see around us.

What makes this all the worse is that this is the sports summer from hell, which has followed one of the best sporting summers of all time. Last year we were spoiled, we had the build up and fall out of �The Decision�, followed by a frenzy of free agents falling where they may after Lebron�s retreat from Cleveland to become part of the big 3 (I thought that was trademarked by a few former champions, but I suppose we aren�t creative enough for another nickname).

The NFL offseason as always was outstanding, minus the constant checkups on high school football practices to evaluate the health of aging QB�s. We were given a large build up to the 3 day extravaganza event that is the new NFL draft. The draft followed shortly by mini camps, free agency, and then finally topped off with the highly entertaining Rex Ryan and the Jets on Hardknocks as they spoon-feed us just enough to keep us satisfied until we start to get a taste of on field football in the Hall of Fame Game.

Last year we even had the World Cup last year. One of the two times each decade that soccer can actually draw the attention from the average American sports fan, to at least get them to glance in their direction long enough to acknowledge it might actually be a sport. All of this last year and now this year we get baseball. We�re so desperate for sports that the women�s World Cup has actually been getting attention. I wouldn�t be shocked if ESPN�s non-stop promotion of their, likely,economically friendly acquisition has worked out in huge profits for them.

In the end all of us sports junkies are forced to find things in real life to do, or turn to Copa America, Women�s Soccer, and God forbid baseball to give us our sports fix. We continue to wait it out and hope the NFL can finally divide their mountains of money into adequate piles for the players and owners to agree to split so we can have sports once again add positive distraction to our lives, instead of adding to the negative news cycle of which we already get more than enough. Although at this point it appears as if the NBA and NFL lockouts have stolen our summer distraction.