Last year the Red Sox had their greatest season ever. This year they will not make the playoffs. I am not paying much attention, except for the batting statistics.
I don't want to be greedy. After an entire childhood and middle-age of only the Celtics winning championships here and there, we have had unbelievable riches in New England since 2001. In addition to championships, we have had many "almost" seasons that other regions would be happy to remember.
We are lucky in that we have so many colleges that only the alumni of each one cares about its sports teams, so the fandom looks at the professionals. We have only FCS football, occasional NCAA tournament basketball, laughable college baseball, track-and-field, etc. We do have good college hockey, for what it's worth.
The Celtics fell apart. The Red Sox have fallen apart. Never count out the Patriots, but Kansas City, Los Angeles X2, Indianapolis, Carolina, Philadelphia, Minnesota, and a few others look good. The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.
One of the great culture shocks of my life was moving from Dorchester and Northeastern University to West Lafayette and Purdue. That was 1966, the last year of the great Bob Griese, almost a Heisman winner. And there was college football at its most intense. A game was a whole day celebration. Even the evening before was taken up with all sorts of celebrations.
ReplyDeleteAfter a couple of years in upstate New York at Union College (a real treat), I rejoined the B1G at Ohio State, and served out my career there. Again the intensity of big time college sports is amazing. Each game is important. Traditions and some rivalries go back 130 years. Stadiums are huge, much bigger than pro stadiums. There are about six college stadiums that hold over 100,000 people. And usually they fill up, at least if the team is any good.
Nowadays, retired, I watch college football and the Patriots. Haven't watched a baseball game for years; never liked basketball of hockey.
It's a shame there are no good college football teams in NE. BC was real good at one time. It's also a shame all the state schools in NY and NE are bad. In the Midwest and Pacific coast and even in the South and Southwest, many of the big state universities are every bit as good academically as the Ivies. Texas, Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and many others are academically superb.