Actually I love sports, but I'm really burnt out on being a professional sports team fan. My football team recently failed to progress to the Super Bowl (I won't say which but you can probably guess by my location), and it got me thinking. Why the hell am I putting all this effort into rooting for a team, buying logo clothing, and getting all upset when they lose, when the players themselves don't really care?
Case in point: a prominent player from my team recently took advantage of his free agent status and signed with a rival (again, you can probably guess who I'm talking about based on where I'm from). When he played for "my" team, I bought several of his jerseys, rooted for him when he was on the field, and felt for him when he made mistakes. Those jerseys were not cheap; am I supposed to be happy for him because he's now making an extra several hundred thousand dollars a year? What the hell am I supposed to do with these jerseys?
And when you are making several million dollars a year, do you really need a few hundred thousand more? Especially when more than half goes to taxes, and then another 25 percent goes to your agent and manager? The percentage raise he got is probably the equivalent of the percentage of my disposable income I spent on paraphenalia honoring him - his jerseys, game tickets, beer cozies with the team logo on them, etc. That makes me an idiot, and him a jerk.
And now he goes on SportCenter and talks about how all he wants to do is help his team win. Bullshit, he doesn't care about that team any more than he cared about my team.
And now, neither do I. I'm tired of feeling stupid for caring about a sport when the guys getting paid millions every year clearly don't care about it.
