The State of Pro Sports

I don't know why exactly, whether it's because I've become older or simply more focused on my own sporting activities or increasingly disillusioned by the business side, but I've become less and less interested in pro sports. Where I could sit for hours discussing current events in the pro sports world years ago, I now find myself bored when that subjects enters the conversation. Yes, I still follow baseball and hockey religiously depending on the time of year, it just doesn't interest me te way it used to. When I get locked into one of those conversations, I want to talk about almost anything else.

I think more than anything, it's the business side that causes me to lose interest. Watching three of the five best basketball players in the world all sign with the same team has basically killed any remaining interest I have in the NBA. Watching the Yankees and Red Sox spend their ways to AL East titles year after year makes it difficult to justify spending time watching the Jays when they realistically have no chance of making the playoffs. And when the Chicago Blackhawks assemble a championship team that was exciting to watch and win the Stanley Cup only to have to dismantle it in order to get under the salary cap is disappointing.

On top of it all, the fact remains that I would rather be out playing the sports that I love than sitting and watching others do it. I have always maintained that if I could, I would play baseball every night for the entire summer and hockey every night of the winter. And I long for the days when I would go shag fly balls every day after work with the boys and skate on the pond every night after school.

But those days are long gone.

People don't fully understand why I get so intense when I'm out playing C division slopitch or rec league hockey, but I think that's it. Two, maybe three times a week I get to do the one thing I want to do every day.

So maybe it's just jealousy that I don't care as much for pro sports anymore.

-matt