By Liz Ciancone
Oh boy! I think I’ve glimpsed eternity. They call it “football season”.
Oh for those golden days when there was no Super Bowl — only a championship game between the two teams with the best season record. As I recall, that game was finished before New Year’s so that the Rose Bowl game was the biggie. I’m SURE my Best Friend said the other day that this year the Super Bowl is scheduled well into February.
But, not to worry football fans. There was plenty going on with assorted college “bowl” games. There’s the Rose Bowl, of course, and the Sugar Bowl and the Orange Bowl and the Cotton Bowl to fill your screens well into basketball season. Maybe they could run it into baseball season. Why not? They still play ice hockey into summer when the ice should be melted.
We don’t have an Oatmeal Bowl or a Finger Bowl — not YET — but we have the Pro Bowl and there’s an East/West game and a North/South game .
In an effort to string out the “season” and, not incidentally, increase profits, owners devised a system of “wild card” contenders to multiply the games and hold out the hope to some less successful team that it could get lucky and end up winning all the marbles. This plays well with hometown fans, certainly with Chicago Bears fans here at chez Ciancone, but it says nothing about which is the truly superior team to win the Lombardi Trophy.
And, as if the season didn’t run on forever, they start early in August with “pre-season” games and, I understand, are considering a longer season!
I seem to recall a seasonal hiatus between the Super Bowl and the NCAA basketball finals and the start of baseball season. Not to deny sports fans, they televised the arm wrestling championship. That was about as exciting as the current run of poker tournaments.
And, speaking of eternity, the Super Bowl game can last all day what with the pre-game whoopla and a half-time extravaganza.
It’s not that I don’t like a good game, but I do like to care about which team wins. Games are now scheduled so late in the evening that I’m dozing in my chair before the talking heads finish analyzing the daylights out of the game to come.
It’s enough to consider tuning in a mindless sitcom.
It’s endless! It’s eternity!
Liz CIancone is a retired Tribune-Star reporter. Send e-mail to opinion@tribstar.com.
