I have spent my entire life since the age of five as a sports fan ( standing in our living room watching Johnny Podres finish off the Yankees for the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers’ world championship on a tiny black and white TV). Played four years as a wide receiver at college and always enjoyed watching football on television, whether it be college or professional. Considering myself as good an analyst as those well paid sports shills has brought me to speak out on the current state of affairs. What we have is a well orchestrated system that has operated in the same manner that our current political one has. The sports media promotes and allows our football games to be run as if they are middle school ones. We have players who celebrate and mug for the cameras and the stands filled with fans just about each time a good catch or tackle happens. The players and their coaches embrace each other as if a world war just ended. The announcers and sexy sideline reporters feed into this as well. We who participated in those shenanigans when we were 12 year old middle school kids, not the ( so called ) adults on the field of play.

Where are the old school football coaches and general managers and their owners who could stop this childish behavior? There were always fans who came to a game just to ‘ Get their rocks off’ with screaming and shouting obscenities at the opposing teams and umpires and referees. Then, they were the minority. Today they are the majority. Sorry to do this but do you see the congruity between middle school sports behavior and that of many Trump Thumpers AKA MAGA?  Guess what? All of this is nothing but a reflection of our Amerikan culture 21st Century. Seriously, we have a president and his cabal who love to play the crowd, raising the meanness level to all time highs. A neighbor who was annoyed by the way the roofing company was doing its work began complaining about ‘ Those monkeys on the roof!’ Sadly, when the Rot begins at the top it always filters down the rest of the tree.

PA Farruggio
September 2025