It is indeed looking like Patrick Mahomes will play on his sprained ankle -- I mean for all his wonderful play one amazingly fine thing about the guy is his ferocious competitiveness. He has so much of it -- we cannot be more thrilled to keep enjoying watching this guy do what he does in the way he does it.
But yeah, brutal schedule stretch coming up here. After the Texans it is the Steelers and Broncos.
I should be able to make some really quick notes after each game, but here while I have a bit more time I wanted to make mention of an extraordinarily disappointing thing that has been going on with all of the American football world.
It isn't the money, really, because the money is merely a reflection of the authentic value of a given individual. That's actually a very fine thing.
It is certainly, however, the love of money, the root of all evil.
I've been paying attention to some of the television ads showing up in our games. Remember when the ads for football were almost exclusively beer, automobiles, shaving cream, and spark plugs?
Well, there are still a few beer and auto ads, but it seems like most of the other ads are for pharmaceutical products or insurance.
Uggh.
I am a stalwart Chiefs fan, and it is a joy to experience this golden age of Veach-Reid-Mahomes-led Chiefs football. We all feel that way. Even at that time later when they are not as dominant, I will still be a devout fan. Have been that way for the last, oh, fifty or so years.
But I can't help but shake my head and feel it when these evils are supporting our football entertainment.
There should be a law against pharmaceutical ads. In fact some have even suggested it. They are spiffy and splashy targeted to people who have no business deciding about these specific kinds of things, so why are they being shown to them? It isn't that they shouldn't be deciding things for their health, but that's exactly the point. Big Pharma works to make it so people are sick so they may continue to have customers. So much could be argued about how much these ads should not be shown, much more put into the substance of our athletes' paychecks. It is much more of a grievous evil than people think.
Then there is the insurance racket. These companies make billions from the task of keeping people frightened of anything and everything, and they feature hip, happy, fun vignettes to get people believing these racketeers have their best interests in mind. I've sometimes thought: huh, what can they put in these commercials to sell their crap, what can they say? The most honest one is the guy who wrecks everything, I think he calls himself "Mayhem." But still, "Here are all the crappy things out there you need to pay us to protect yourself from!" It is just wickedly exploitive.
Of course there are still the auto commercials, except that even those are hawking electric vehicles and doing so because they are subsidized by government to do more to hawk them. Few seem to grasp not only how inefficient electric automobiles are, but also how destructive. It seems most car commercials now feature the latest in fully electric technology that ironically require things that are indeed horribly labor exploitive and tremendously hazardous to the environment.
Then there are still the beer commercials, for a product that is still an illicit drug and one that should also be strictly prohibited. Yes, I've shared before: I am a Prohibition-favoring, temperance movement-cheering teetotaler, but that doesn't change the reality of how dangerous drinking alcohol is. It should say something when they have to put at the bottom of every ad, "Do this or that responsibly," "Don't drink and drive," "Be careful with your wretchedly ugly habit here, okay, just please don't be an asshole after drinking though we know how much we contribute to that," of course so they can try to absolve themselves of any and all liability.
Speaking of those kinds of disclaimers and warnings, there is also the massive prevalence of gambling site ads. I've already gone to the mat about the horrors of those, and yes, every single one of those operations should be shut down -- not just removed from their associations with sports leagues but made against the law. If you want to do all that from your basement far away from any of the sports entities, like it used to be, then I guess you can do that. But now?...
The added note about this is what it is doing to college football.
It is killing it.
Right now you've got two evils that on the face of it could be decent, but they've been so abused that they are right now tearing the sport apart. You know what they are:
NIL and The Portal.
Not going to go into the details of these twin bastards, there is so much of it, except to say that to have college sports the way it should be, the rule should be this:
Go to school and stay there. Once you sign up, stay there, but on a team, and support your school and your team for four years. Go to class during the day and practice in the afternoon. For football play no more than 10 games a year and then a bowl game if you're good enough.
Find joy in that and be thankful you're getting an education paid for already.
And if you are one of the 0.0000000000000001% of the college players who are good enough to play in the NFL, then enjoy your stay there for, what, on average, two or three years, make some money, and then go to work at the job you learned to do in college just like everyone else.
And for all the teams in the NCAA or whatever governing entity there is there, stay in your regional conferences. Stay there and continue to foster the splendid rivalries you've established there. Enjoy it. Have fun. Revel in the blessing you have by it. Treasure the education you are getting.
This is not hard.
But, well,
The love of money.
This evil has kept wiser heads from prevailing, and it is extraordinarily sorrowful. Trying too hard to make everyone happy, you know, with all the monnnney... they are destroying their sport. Huh, I seem to remember a story about the Golden Goose.
All of this has seeped into the NFL, as well, just be virtue of how they are making their money and their attitude towards it. It's making its way into all of high-level organized sports, highlighted by all the gruesome "woke" stuff that still permeates everything. It does seem like they are dialing all that back a bit, but until they've all completely disavowed any and all "LGBTQ" kinds of things and anything like it, it will still be infected with the money rot and alienate even more fans than they already have.
Alas.
Our Chiefs.
It will get to a point when, should this keep up, my attention to even the Chiefs will wane, especially if and when they are not doing so well. Right now it doesn't seem as if the NFL is suffering much, I mean at least there is a critical mass of fans who really get off on hating the Chiefs for their wild success. That's actually a really cool thing about this Chiefs golden age. You know it.
But yeah, where is all this going...
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The image was clipped from a recent Sporting News item. Thank you.
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