Christensen: Too Much of a Good Thing?

By Todd Christensen
April 22, 2011

While perusing the sports section last week, I came upon the page in which televised events were airing. With Major League Baseball in full swing, the playoffs in both basketball and hockey playing almost daily, the pre-draft specials for the NFL and not to mention the ongoing saga that is the labor dispute, there was plenty to watch on the sporting front.

The reason I mention this is because I was surprised how titillated I was with the prospect of there being games to watch. I would like to say that I was torn between reading Kant or Nietzsche or viewing LeBron and his "Heatles." But in truth, I was looking forward to bouncing the channels and reveling in the drama that is professional sports.

As I started to watch both the hockey and the basketball, however, I realized that, to embarrass Robert Frost, there were "miles to go before I sleep." With the series being best of seven, the playoffs for both sports seem to be interminably long and the eventual championship becomes one of attrition rather than simply skill.

Hockey begins and ends earlier than basketball, but in effect, both run the length of the school year and end some time around Fathers Day.

Baseball has always been a long season, but with expanded playoffs over the last few years the World Series has found itself ending in the month of Thanksgiving. With pitchers and catchers reporting in the middle of February, that’s not much of an offseason. Even shorter is football, where a scant two weeks after the Super Bowl the Indianapolis combine for incoming college players is conducted. Offseason workouts for the clubs officially begin on March 1, the draft is held in April, mini-camps in May and, well, you get the picture.

While I’m not pining for the good old days, I do believe that eventually the glut of games is going to backfire on the respective sports. With heavy competition for the disposal income of the fan and so many other options available, it might be wisdom to rein in the product enough to make it accessible but not omnipresent.

Current player salaries and costs of the new arenas likely make this impossible.

But with more and more players getting injured because of the duration of these respective campaigns and average fans being priced out of the opportunity to attend some of these sporting events, you begin to see that more is not necessarily better.

See all of Todd Christensen's blog entries HERE.