It occurred to me while I was writing that Bissinger and John Feinstein occupy the same place in my head. Both wrote indisputably great sports books in the late 80s. Both are now grumpy old men, writing screeds against college football from the Acela Corridor. In both instances, I read their writing and remember the day when my childhood ended: the day that I read the obituary of Roald Dahl (my favorite author as a boy) obituary and learned that he said the following:
There's a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity ... I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.
Bissinger also reminds me of Don Draper at the end of last week's Mad Men, left behind in a world where he didn't understand The Beatles in their "Hard Day's Night" stage, let alone their new "Tomorrow Never Knows" style, and having a drink while his actual wife is meditating and his office wife is smoking a joint while writing copy. Buzz sees a world where college football has become a national sport, outpacing baseball in a number of ways. The barbarians are at his gates. For a guy already prone to angry outbursts, his WSJ column was entirely predictable.
4 comments:
Look, Michael, this is all interesting and whatever, but how is it relevant to the Yankees-Red Sox?
I'd be interested in your thoughts on football's long-term business model.
The fact that the NFL is a cartel more concerned about increasing the worth of its constituent franchises than with growing the sport overall seems to make it ripe for product stagnation. Even if college football provides an outlet for quality football in places that don't have professional football, that seems like a less than ideal solution to growing interest in football overall as it competes against other sports.
Put another way, football is the number #1 spectator sport in America, but will it stay that way? If international soccer continues to conquer the world and increase the money it can generate for its players in an uninhibited economic free market, why would any decent American teenage athlete go into a sport that requires him to undergo an unpaid internship in order to ultimately play in a cartel league that colludes to depress his wages?
great articl keep like that with ur website
You are right. If you are looking to them from that point of view. Age makes them quite grumpy and screed against Football
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