Category Archives: Sporty Stuff
Finger poke—
Not a big follower of baseball at all, but I do note with glee that the same bunch of social justice warriors who pulled baseball’s All-Star game from Atlanta because the state of Georgia passed a law that made it more difficult for the dead and lazy to vote.
It is a source of glee that I note that this year’s World Series is between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves and therefore half the games (give or take) will be played in Atlanta.
Food for Thought – Morning Edition – 20 May 2021
Performance Enhancement
First, I don’t follow horse racing at all. Closest I ever came to being remotely interested was back when I was an instructor at Fort Knox in my army days. I had a couple of friends who liked to visit Louisville to watch the trotters. It wasn’t from some fantastic desire to see beautiful horses, it was more the fact that this was the ONLY legitimate gambling venue available.
That said, the sports-industrial complex spends a big effort every year for the Kentucky Derby, first race of the Triple Crown, which I guess is like the SuperBowl of horse racing. Much ink and many electrons are used hyping this thing.
So we had one this year. Just like always, a horse won. And just like always, the horse was drug-tested to see if cheating was involved, and WOW! – first tests said the horse was on performance-enhancing drugs. Much hurrah! Many screams. Protests from the owner and trainer. Talk of giving up the trophy, etc. End of story – this morning the horse was cleared of charges and can now run in the second race of the Triple Crown.
I don’t care. My personal thought is fastest horse wins, and if some enterprising owner can figure a way to install a turbojet in a horse’s ass to win a race – go for it!
Same thing goes for human athletes. There’s a constant battle going on between the people who TEST for performance enhancements and those who develop and use them. I don’t care.
NFL? Ain’t much natural about the NFL on a good day, but if one of those beasts figures shooting up a bit of happy juice makes him faster – go for it – no limits. Every player who signs up should sign a waiver forfeiting any repercussions for the use and possible long-term or short-term effects of steroids, baboon gonads, whatever they can try. Up side? We get to see ‘humanity’ at its most extreme limits of capability. Down side? The number of people involved is minuscule in comparison to the total population. A defensive lineman who loses a bit of his lifespan in return for adulation in his career isn’t likely to deprive humanity of the answers to fusion power.
America spends a massive effort on trying to control this whole drug thing. Individual cases are tragic to families affected but we’re spending a lot of effort (and money) for little return.
We need to quit that stuff.
Food for Thought – 28 February 2021
Food for Thought – 27 February 2021
Food for Thought – Morning edition 1 February 2021
A plug in the pipeline
No, not MY pipeline.
There’s a virtual pipeline in America that funnels fodder into the sports-industrial complex to provide the ‘circuses’ part of the bread and circuses that make our society function.
Kids typically enter one end of the funnel in youth sports at an early age – Little League baseball, Pop Warner or PeeWee football, that sort of thing. Somewhere around middle school the gummint takes over with sports programs under the auspices of the ‘education’ system.
By high school, stand-outs are being noted and recruited for the next stage, college sports. Here’s where big money starts showing up. We’re not talking about the paltry money spent on high school football stadiums and gyms, we’re talking MILLIONS for sports complexes that seat nearly a hundred thousand and TV contracts worth untold millions.
The funnel narrows. Out of the college programs, a few trickle out into professional sports. Big Money. Industrial-scale Big Money.
And COVID restrictions are plugging this pipeline. Local school systems are cancelling fall programs. NCAA programs are cancelling. Players that can’t get on the field can’t demonstrate the skills that the professionals desire. Pipeline plugged.
Add to that the fact that watching sports, an activity that once ALL of us could enjoy for a respite from partisan politics, is now a place to shove ‘wokeness’ such as “Black Lives Matter” down our throats for the privilege of watching multimillionaires play games for us.
Big Sports is dying. I’m going to have trouble mourning.
Food for Thought – 20 November 2019
Food for Thought – 13 November 2019
Name Game Nope
Nothing in the paper this Sunday.
Participated in an old-fashioned Baptist traditional “dinner on the grounds”, ate too much GOOD food.
Nothing spectacular planned for the week.
Noted with glee that LSU beat Alabama in college football, and that the god-accursed New Orleans Saints have been beaten by, oh, I dunno, ANYBODY!
And Jeff Epstein did not kill himself.
Food for Thought – 25 October 2019
Food for Thought – 22 October 2019
What you DON’T see…
Is transgender ‘men’ (born female, took an option to be ‘male’) competing against males and ripping the records and wins from natural-born men.
McKinnon, 37, not only set the record in the 35-39 category but also won the 200m gold medal at the Masters Track Cycling World Championships on Sunday. Canadian McKinnon beat out American Dawn Orwick, and Denmark’s Kirsten Herup Sovang, who took silver and bronze behind McKinnon.
Dr. Rachel McKinnon, who was born a man, also won the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles in 2018, among other events.
I mean, it’s almost like being born male gives you certain physical advantages in strength and endurance or something.