Sunday, February 24, 2019

On Failed Offseasons

We are caught between two polar opposites, both of them frustrating, when it comes to the offseason of professional sports. Consider on one hand the NBA, where there is nothing but off-season - there's more buzz now about the impending destinations of Anthony Davis and Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving and Kawhi Leonard and God knows who else that nobody appears to be paying any actual attention to the games being played here and now.
On the other hand, we have MLB, where 30 identical front offices filled with identical Ivy League grad analytics wonks have all independently decided they don't need to do anything in the offseason to stoke fan excitement. The end result there has been a winter of discontent even as franchise-changing superstars hung out their shingles.
Only the NFL gets it right, and that's largely due to commissioner Roger Goodell's uncanny ability to flub the smallest of controversies so that they blow up and have us talking about the NFL. Not in a positive way, mind you, but there's no such thing as bad publicity.

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