Happy Super Bowl Sunday

The absolute #1 thing I can't stand about the on field play aspect of the NFL is the dink and dunk, throw short of the first down on 3rd and 5 or less passing philosophy and how it inflates passer rating since QBs these days complete dozens of passes a season on 3rd down that result in punting anyway but they still go down as completions, yards gained, etc.

But since everyone else is chiming in on different things ruining the game I'll do the same (don't worry Degarmo, I'll address your original post in a minute or ten). Yet another thing ruining the NFL is Badell's failed player discipline program, which resulted in the Players' Association banding together for the first time ever in support of their inalienable right to commit felonies without any consequences whatsoever. We're talking about a group of people who couldn't even stay united in a strike for longer than 2 weeks back in '87 without half of them crossing the picket lines and playing anyway. And then of course that just *had* to be the ONE issue in which the players finally beat the owners, after utterly failing approximately 200 times before This of course resulted in Ray Rice literally getting seen by the entire world slapping his woman around and being treated like Nelson Mandela. These days players can pretty much pull a gun and shoot each other right on the field like that movie The Last Boy Scout and not get ejected, because the league is literally afraid to punish anyone for anything

Okay now replying to that epic post point by point. No quotes because then it would literally be too long to read. I'm actually reading the post in one tab while responding in another so I'll address the points in order

1. Yup. The overall state of QB play these days might actually be worse than it's ever been considering how many of those guys suck despite how absurdly easy it's become to pass. Now we have a league where having an individual passer rating in the 90s doesn't mean squat. It's become the equivalent of the thousand yard rushing season--pretty much any bum can do it if they stay healthy enough.

2. The NBA was actually at its peak in the early 90s because Jordan. You meant the early 00s, certainly I know I used to follow the NBA in the early 90s but stopped after Jordan retired (the first time) and I also know I was far from the only one who did.

3. Officating incompetance has been around for ages. Remember Phil Luckett botching a coin toss on Thanksgiving '98? It's actually just a reflection of two societal trends: One, the elimination of any and all standards across the board in every aspect of life and two, the deliberate overcomplication of things (that's always presented as "modernizing" so you're seen as a knuckle-dragging backwoods hick if you're against it).

4. I'll have to look into how many plays have been lost in modern games, if any. My impression has been that the games today actually run longer than ever yet have less action due to commercials taking up a far greater percentage of the game than ever before. In other words, a 3-plus hour game consisting of 30% ads will have more plays than one the same length with 50% ads by definition. (Also, I have a theory that ad men stopped giving a damn about what was in their commercials when TiVo was invented because they just assumed everyone would skip them but that's for another time and place.)

5. Yes, it's annoying as hell to see the Pats offense consist of some little white guy running to the same spot every time and somehow always being open. That being said, I can't help but wonder why hardly any other team has been able to do the same thing. Maybe they just don't cheat enough?

6. The irony is that Tagliabue will never ever get into the HOF because even while he was commissioner the belief was that a cardboard cutout could've done his job since the league was going to make money regardless. And maybe that's true to some extent, but it sure beats a commissioner who seems to be actively trying to ruin the game, if not end it altogether.

7. I have said it over and over--the reason billionaires are billionaires is NOT because they're thousands of times smarter and harder-working than everyone else, it's because they've devoted their entire existence to the accumulation of money. It's literally their sole reason for being. That's why the more they have, the more they want.

8. People today love shit. It doesn't mean shit now somehow tastes good when eaten, it just means they love to eat shit. Decades of media brainwashing have paid off. And the media itself is just a tool used by the people who are really in charge.

WHEW~! I think that about covers it