Death and Taxes
The degree to which any game is of importance to you is in direct proportion to the amount of distraction you can expect to experience during that game. You can be assured that if you’re a New York Giant fan (hypothetically speaking, of course), Las Vegas would not take odds that your daughters (if you had, oh I don’t know, let’s say two who, for the sake of argument have little or no interest in professional football, never mind the Super Bowl) will ask you to “make more popcorn daddy!” just as Eli Manning is about to throw the game winning touchdown pass to…let’s just throw a name out here,….oh, o.k., how about Plaxico Burriss.
If you decide to activate Tim Thomas (Boston Bruin’s goalie) because you have a “hunch” (read about it on Rotowire) that he’s due for a good game (after all the Bruins are in the thick of the NHL playoff hunt and they’re playng the Maple Leafs, who are going nowhere fast), you be can bet he’ll get lit up for 8 goals.
If you’re the commissioner of an autodraft fantasy MLB league, you can count on the owneres of Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, and Josh Beckett, to be the biggest whiners in your league because “autodrafts are so not fair.”
All non-Green Bay Packer fans will have “had enough of Farve-Fest ‘08,” Formula 1 fans will think NASCAR is for rednecks, Met fans are pessimists, Yankee fans are arrogant, golfers are not athletes, and UFOs are real.
Many sports fans will have come “this close” to having picked George Mason to go deep in the NCAA Tournament, “could have told you” that Tom Brady was going to be a great NFL quarterback, and “never gave up” on the Bosox when they trailed the Yankees 3-0 in the American League Championship game.
Tiger Woods fans “have always” liked watching golf on television, Florida Gator fans “just knew” that Peyton Manning woud be a great pro even though his Tennessee Volunteers never beat Florida while he was there, and all Indiana Hoosier fans “never liked Isiah Thomas.”
Most viewers of ESPN thought it was a “great idea” to start broadcasting the NFL Draft, Selection Sunday, and Austrailian Rules Football, Raider fans “had a feeling” that John Madden would become more known for being a color commentator than a Super Bowl winning coach, and Notre Dame fans thought it was a “huge mistake” to fire Ty Willingham and replace him with Charlie Weiss.
And lastly (for now), most living Yankee fans saw Mickey Mantle play at some point “towards the end of his career,” baseball “purists” could tell that “something wasn’t right” with McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, and Clemens, and there wasn’t one NBA talent evaluator who would not have drafted Kobe Bryant and or Labron James right out of high school.
