I’m very tired this morning. Why? Because I stayed up to very close to midnight last night to watch what passes for a professional football game these days. A game that was decided on the last play when the replacement referees blew a call that would have been obvious to my four year old.
And I’m done with it. I’m done with investing 3.5 to 4 hours on a game that’s arbitrarily decided on the last play by refs who were officiating Division 3 games last year. I’m done with staying up into the wee hours on a Monday or Sunday or Thursday night to find that the first 3.25 hours were merely prologue, and that a nap would have been just as valuable a use of my time.
The players can’t strike because it’s prohibited by the CBA. The coaches won’t strike because essentially they’re part of management. That only leaves one segment of the population: the fans.
Without the fans, there is no NFL. Whether we’re purchasing tickets to go to the game, or sitting through the advertisements during a game on television, it’s our eyeballs that the NFL is dependent on for their business. But the product that they’re putting in front of us is a sham, a travesty, a travestshammockery if you will. And it’s not worth our attention.
So I, for one, am pulling the plug. I know I am but a tiny, tiny drop in a vast ocean of NFL fandom, but it is what I can do. The NFL season is over for me, not that it ever began, until the real referees return to the job.