Notes From My Knapsack 1-08-06
Jeff Gill

What’s the Shelf Life of Football?

Having established that Ohio State gets home field advantage whenever playing in Arizona, my interest in football has largely just dropped to academic, if that.
As I write this, there are at least three more bowl games in the college football cosmos to play, and then the elongated pro football playoff season, extending now to February.
Stop it, please.
Baseball now goes to November, with flurries obscuring infield fly balls, and hockey is apparently a summer sport. Now I plan to watch far too much of the Winter Olympics, even if LeeAnn Parsley isn’t riding the skeleton down the mountain, and I love aspects of baseball enough to be able to name for you the entire 1969 Chicago Cubs starting lineup. Sport is fun, and fun to watch, in all manner of forms and year round, but . . .
You may know the phrase about "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs" from the fable of the greedy old soul who cut open said fowl to see how to maximize the production of precious metals. Wordsworth said in one of his poems "we murder to dissect," reminding us that some mysteries are best enjoyed mysteriously, and not broken down into constituent parts for profit analysis.
The whole bowl game, BCS, stretch the ratings out approach leaves me wanting to ask: can they actually be so clever as to drive away sports fans? I see the goal of stretching out big games over enough nights to draw more eyeballs, additional ratings points, and beaucoup dollars from advertisers, but could they outsmart themselves at some point, a point we may already have passed?
Wednesday, now past for you but still a Rose Bowl fantasy, is so far beyond the parade, Times Square, and all the little bowl cousins. Part of the mystique of New Year’s Eve and Day was the spectacle of more football in the channel guide than you could ever watch. The games you weren’t seeing were part of the thrill of the game you were watching; no more.
The program is similar to the shelf space Monopoly that goes on in groceries and retail outlets. Thingummy, a product sold for fifty years, becomes Thingummy with Mint, No Wax Thingummy, and Thingummy Classic. Sales staff sees that the amount of linear feet devoted to product has increased, and start to gin up items that don’t really sell well, but help to maintain a visually dominant place in front of the consumer. Thingummy Menthol, Whitening Thingummy on Casters, Thingummy To Go in a tube, and Kosher Thingummy for Goyim join Thingummy By the Foot and Industrial-Strength Thingummy. Ten products, of which eight are likely not only unnecessary, but unwanted (not that they aren’t supported by a nationwide ad campaign). All are needed, though, to maintain a goodly foot of shelf space.
That same kind of illogic seems to be at work with sports seasons. Even with a few less viewers or spectators per event, the total comes out higher, or so goes the reasoning. Add longer rents for the profit centers called sky boxes ("Jack Abramoff, call your office; Mr. Abramoff") and more sales of logo-ed items year ‘round, then you can even be insouciant about lower attendance figures.
For a while.
What happens when we get jaded with the manipulation? When Thingummy just becomes another brand, and no longer a vital part of our lives, which it actually never was anyhow? If we start to see sporting options as another consumer choice, and find jai lai just as compelling, followed a few years later by full contact mah jongg? (Quidditch, anyone?)
This is likely wishful thinking: that the tastemakers and media moguls could outsmart themselves. Mencken famously suggested that no one ever went broke underestimating the tastes of the American public, but doesn’t everyone hate condescension, especially when it’s obvious?
On the other hand, I held off watching "American Idol" until last year, and now the Lovely Wife and I are thoroughly hooked. I thought it was all about the Bo, while she saw Carrie coming from way back. Maybe someone will sing "She Bangs" again this year in the audition episodes.
So I guess this is Idol season now, isn’t it?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio who is also a not-so-secret American Idol fan of recent vintage; explain Clay Aiken’s attraction to disciple@voyager.net.