The pleasure of being parked in front of the TV, watching games, and cheering for your favorite teams for hours, has been replaced by addiction to point spreads, fantasy team performances, and metrics. The love for the game that began in our childhoods has deteriorated, replaced by a cynicism that has taken the fun out of sports.
The athletes, partly because of their exorbitant salaries, have been dissected and reduced to physical machines expected to perform at the highest level. When they don’t, they face ridicule, scrutiny, and beratement.
Part of that criticism is warranted because they are the one-tenth of 1 percent ― receiving generational wealth. But the games we once loved are no longer gratifying unless we’re making money or winning heated debates with our friends (or adversaries) on social media.
The fan has turned into a curmudgeonly analyst, with even those in elementary school feeling they have the skill and savvy to be Brad Stevens or Eliot Wolf. Every play is dissected and posted on social media for consumption. Thirty minutes after the professional home team or college team wins or loses, a podcast goes live with complete analysis and opinion from a bevy of self-proclaimed experts.
Now, the innocence has been sapped from our games primarily because of the money, and that’s not our fault. College athletes have turned into free agents, jumping from school to school strictly for the boost in NIL salary, showing little allegiance because, quite honestly, the system has shown none to them after years of playing for free or illegal side payments. College has become the pros, just with big bands and cool mascots.
It wasn’t always this way, and I’d like to thank an NFL historian for making me realize that. Kevin Gallagher posts dozens of NFL clips from the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s on his X feed, those classic NFL Films videos narrated by the likes of John Facenda, Harry Kalas, and Tom Brookshier. The Hall of Fame players and those who weren’t but were pretty darn good. Those retro uniforms, the bad Astroturf, the multipurpose stadiums where Billy Sims was being tackled by Jack Youngblood at second base, amid the cool accompanying highlight music.
It conjured cherished memories of times when I couldn’t wait until the 10 a.m. kickoff (I grew up in Los Angeles) and watched whatever game was available ― before the days of Sunday Ticket and RedZone, kiddos ― just because I loved the game. I idolized the players. They were heroes whose moves we would reenact the next day in school. And we couldn’t wait until the next Sunday for the new slate of games.
Unfortunately, the NFL and NBA especially have been the victims of their own success. Our appetites for content have created not only these megabillion-dollar entities, but have made the games overanalyzed, and turned them from hobbies into sometimes unhealthy obsessions. We don’t watch unless there’s money on the line. We couldn’t care less about the result as long as our fantasy players are piling up points.
NBA coaches Joe Mazzulla and J.B. Bickerstaff have talked about fans screaming at them to keep players in games that have already been decided due to prop bets. And this isn’t all our fault, either. The NBA, NFL, and Major League Baseball have embraced relationships with betting companies, announcers pointing out the money lines during games. I somehow couldn’t imagine Pat Summerall or Vin Scully doing that.
The money at stake through betting has seemingly given us freedom to criticize and analyze the games and players to the point of losing appreciation for the art and the skill. Russell Westbrook, a likely first-ballot Hall of Famer, spent the final years of his career getting trashed by some fans for his weaknesses, and then suddenly received a wave of adulation when he decided to retire.
The games don’t make us smile like they used to. Bonding for father and son is wearing matching T-shirts denigrating LeBron James, as I saw at TD Garden a few years ago. These are all games we played as kids for free, for the amusement, the recreation, the thrill, the fun.
Are we still having fun here? Are these athletes still capable of being heroes? Can we watch games that don’t monetarily benefit us? Do we remember those pure and virtuous feelings we held when we tried mimicking the moves of our favorite Celtics star or tried to replicate the batting stances of every member of the 1983 Red Sox?
Don’t those memories bring a smile? Can we recapture that glee again or have sports become such a corporate behemoth that there’s no way to really enjoy the games again unless there’s a tangible benefit? The fun has been obliterated from our games and everybody involved is responsible.
Gary Washburn is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @GwashburnGlobe.
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