The time will soon come where I lose annual interest in sports
The Super Bowl is in a few days and then after that I tend to have a rather nonplussed attitude about sports in general. I think this is a big part of the reason why last year I got into the WNBA even though it is something that I probably would have just ignored otherwise. I am one of those people that will watch almost anything or if not, at least track the stats of the games but for lots of reasons, right around February and March of every year, I kind of check out as far as sports are concerned and don't really pay that much attention to any of them.
I think this year is going to end up being even worse.
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The first reason why I am going to drop off this year even more than others is because one of my favorite sports, MMA, is looking like they already don't really know what to do with the upcoming cards. It's as if they know that they have overplayed their hand and now are in a position of realizing that they really don't have anything great in the wings waiting to come out.
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During UFC 325, they did some advertising about UFC 326 as they always do. They are so up in the air about what the hell we are going to do next that they haven't even determined what the card is going to be yet. This is just all fine and dandy if we are talking about some unknowns in the early prelims, but the co-main event? That's kind of something that should have been worked out a long time ago. Also, the main main event is a BMF bout and even the people who have held that belt don't care about that.
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The next reason I lose interest is because of the length of the NBA season. I love NBA basketball but the season is just too damn long to hold my interest. They play more of the year than not. There are, in total, 1230 games in an NBA season and this is before we talk about the playoffs. I get that this is a huge money-maker for the sport and it must be an absolutely monumental undertaking to get all of that televised but man, I can't keep up with that and it is really tough to actually care about something with a duration like that. Plus, with the season being as long as it is the teams that are "good" could change radically before the end of the regular season. There is no reason to get all worked up because your team is doing well at this point. Every team is just one or two injuries away from dropping many places in the rankings and many teams go so far as to not really even go full out at this point in the season.
I feel the same way about baseball where there are a staggering 2430 games in a year, again, before including the playoffs.
The WNBA was something I was looking forward to with Caitlin Clark coming back after a long injury and seeing whatever that girl's name is in Dallas shine into her 2nd season, but those girls have been bitching so much about salaries that I am kind of turned off by the entire thing.
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Apparently, talks in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) have stalled because the players' side of things are refusing to budge on their stance that they get paid substantially more despite the fact that the league has NEVER turned a profit in the 20 years it has been in operation. It is a charity league that is funded by the NBA yet they want more money. At this point I say just let it stand on it's own legs, stop subsidizing it, and let it fail. Then they can all complain that it was someone else's fault that the league failed even though the league already has been a failure since its very inception.
College basketball is ok I guess but again, we are in a situation where what is true now almost certainly wont be true a few months from now. Hell, friggin Nebraska was a top 5 NCAA basketball team - which nobody took seriously - until they dropped 2 in a row. I briefly got excited about that but wasn't really even paying attention. When I found out that they had won 20 games in a row (albeit mostly against teams you have never heard of) I was really surprised just like everyone else, but barely losing to Michigan and then badly losing to Illinois pulled all the wind out of their sails.
So maybe I'll take a break and watch some movies - perhaps sports movies! - for a bit instead of even bothering. It is possible to have more than one hobby after all.