29 Sunset

A thought on the future of U.S. national team fandom

January 17, 2021

There’s a video from 2010 I think about a lot that shows a variety of Americans’ reactions to Landon Donovan scoring his last-second goal against Algeria in that year’s World Cup.

I was in an office in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I worked for a sports media company. Perhaps my memory is fogged by time and what I wish it to be, but I remember a bunch of us were gathered around a television, watching the end of the game.

Insurrection, Ted Lasso, and the limits of empathy

January 7, 2021

This week, an armed mob breached the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the Congressional process certifying the 2020 election results. As I scrolled through images of police taking selfies with the terrorists and pulling aside barriers to let them through and then making sure they didn’t slip on their way back down the front steps, naturally my thoughts turned to Ted Lasso.

Improving the College Football Playoff (if you're not interested in excising an immoral rot in American sports)

December 20, 2020

Oklahoma Sooners wide receiver CeeDee Lamb (2); Oklahoma defeated UCLA 48-14, Sept 14, 2019, Pasadena, CA.

College football gets a lot wrong. On the most fundamental level, I don’t think the NCAA should exist, but even setting that aside, in the summer, college football leaders wished the virus wouldn’t affect their season and then when cases and deaths kept piling up they struck forward anyway, unnecessarily risking the lives of participants, laborers, and spectators alike because it’s a business where people gotta get paid (but not the players, no sir).

All that said, if you’re willing to tolerate blood lust and sociopathic greed to get your kicks watching young people bash each other’s brains to prove your school-associated in-group is superior to others, the College Football Playoff and the specific idea of a committee choosing which teams will play for an official national championship is a great idea.

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