Good morning, all!
I hope you had a terrific Thanksgiving. I watched a lot of football over the holiday weekend, including some great college games. None was better than Alabama’s dramatic, last-second win over Auburn in the Iron Bowl.
As our family was riveted to the action, and the cameras continued to pan the 80,000-plus fans at Jordan-Hare Stadium, someone in the room remarked how amazing the turnout for the game was. This was after we watched more than 100,000 fans attend the Ohio St. at Michigan game. It was the perfect opening to remind people how enormous the sport of football is in the U.S, especially in the south. NFL and college football rule the sports landscape. Every other sport is second. The dominant conversation on sports talk radio year round on most stations in the country is football. The top sports podcasts have football as the subject matter.
I know this bugs baseball stalwarts, and remember I love baseball. But I love football too and facts are facts. While baseball continues to recede into a regional sport with what seems a never-ending schedule of games, football dominates coast-to-coast, with games once per week adding to the importance of each clash. Don’t think so? Regular season college football games on television routinely top the ratings of World Series games. NFL regular season games leave the World Series in the dust. That’s just the way it is.
If you live in the northeast, that may seem hard to believe, where baseball still has a grip, although pro football outranks baseball in these parts too. Even the venerable Boston Globe ranks the Red Sox fourth, among interest in the Patriots, Celtics, Bruins and Sox.
Football overtook baseball in the late 1960s, as technology assisted in making football and television the perfect marriage. Since then the sport has never looked back. Football is such a religion down south, I can still recall my amazement the time I journeyed to Clemson to broadcast the University of Hartford men’s basketball game at Clemson.
We arrived on campus late Tuesday morning for a Wednesday night game. That Saturday, Clemson was hosting South Carolina in their annual post-Thanksgiving clash. Campers and RVs were everywhere, set up on the campus outskirts. Everywhere you looked there was a big party going on, as people showed up five days before the game. And that was 22 years ago. The atmosphere is even stronger now.
Football is family, community, action and more throughout most of the country. The sport generates billions of dollars and is an economy onto itself. On the sports landscape, football dominates; every other sport finishes second. This is not to disparage the other sports. Enjoy them all.
The sinking of the once proud Patriots
Watching the once dominant New England Patriots sink to the bottom reminds me of the 1960s New York Yankees. Like the football Patriots, the baseball Yankees were perennial contenders, usually winning the World Series or at least making it to the Fall Classic season after season. Then, in what seemed like a nanosecond, the Yankees went from losing a seven-game World Series in 1964 to last place two seasons later.
How could this have been? The Yankees still had many of the same players that led them to titles. The reasons for their demise is a newsletter onto itself. Let’s just say the Yankees collapse is proof the only constant in sports - and for that matter, life - is change.
The Yankees did recover their mojo to headline the sport in the 1970s and 1990s with some dominance, but the hurdles for them or any team in any sport are now too high to create the preeminence once reserved for those Yankees in the mid-20th century. A multi-tiered playoff system, player draft, free agency and more throw roadblocks into dynasty building. That is what made the Patriots nearly quarter-of-a-century run of Super Bowl titles and appearances so amazing. They beat the odds in a sport designed to suffocate dynasties.
Will the Patriots return to contention? Of course they will, but like the Yankees they will do so with a different cast and there is a good chance coach Bill Belichick will not be listed on the playbill.
That is going to do it for this week’s newsletter. As always, thank you for your support and pray for peace.
SPORTSCASTER DAN