LIFE AND SPORTS

I am a happy old broad tonight. The Green Bay Packers won the Superbowl and had to go the same route that the Broncos had to take to beat the Packers way back in 1998.  I grew up in Wisconsin but have spent most of my adult life in Colorado and that year I wanted one for John.  We got it. I can't deny it.  I love Football and Baseball.  I couldn't be my Father's daughter without it.  I also know the obscenity as far as revenues for the owners and the players.

Trust me, the owners make the players look like paupers in the media deals.  This was a great Superbowl - two dynasties.  I promise, the owners and the media would have been weeping in their silk hankies if it had been the likes of the Seahawks and the Texans.  Football fans would have been saying "HELLZYAH" because it wouldn't have been more of the same, but advertisers and marketers would have been wetting their huggies trying to figure out how to get people to watch.  The majority of TV sports watchers are big market players and they want the big boys in the show.  This show was true, Midwestern, Smash-mouth FOOTBALL.

I listened to everything Lawrence O'Donnell had to say today about what professional athletes make and the obscenity of it all in comparison with the state of the rest of the country, much less the world.  He is right.  And I totally agree with him as regards cities and states being held hostage to owners who demand that tax payers purchase their multi-million and now billion dollar stadiums.

I understand everything he ranted about tonight....especially Jerry Jones' stadium where some ticket holders got left in a media center or the parking lot because after all that money and all the time he had to prepare, just because he wanted to break a record, he couldn't make certain that all the seats would pass a simple, fucking safety code.  He remains in my sewer of NFL owners.  I'll list them sometime in another post when I do some top ten or whatever that nobody reads anyway.

Jerry Jones...by the way, a lot of people think he paid for the stadium himself and they're wrong...the tax payers helped him fund this "Dallas Palace" just like all the other stadiums. I like how most everyone connected with professional sports is a republican but then they really like that old socialism when it comes to their stadiums, since it's the population which includes upper, middle upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle, upper lower, lower, low, and indigent classes who help build those stadiums.

 In the case of Jerry Jones' palace, I guess he figures that he can employ a lot of janitors at minimum wage.  Tell that to the janitor's kid who looks up to Neon Deion.  Deion...talk to the man.

I didn't think I had this much to say about the down side.  However, that's what makes the rest of what I need to say so important.

I'm not ignorant nor am I blind.  However, I've been doing a lot of watching and listening these past weeks.  I will grant you that there are a lot of players who do nothing but care for and take care of themselves.  However, a lot of these fine young men are NOT juiced and they take care of not only their communities but communities abroad.  I have become aware of so many foundations that are not "in name only"...these athletes and their desperately needed aid show up in destitute countries and regions and they make a difference.  There are a lot of good and fine young men on those fields who have been waiting and hoping and are now executing on the opportunity to pay it forward.

I won't choose.  If all of our life is spent just working to elect, effect, and immerse ourselves in politics, why did we elect representatives?  Shouldn't we get a little time off?  I was sick on Saturday and missed a reorganization meeting for my county.  I feel terrible but life did go on.  I hope they elected my choices and if they didn't I guess I should have shown up regardless my health.  I wish we had as many fans at caucus and county meetings as we have at sporting events but that's silly...why show up for work when you can show up for play and then bitch about the few who show up for work?

So to the joyous part.  I talked to my octogenarian parents before and after the Superbowl.  They were beside themselves as life long Packer fans and life long Wisconsinites.  My brother, Andy, had the party at his house and cooked a ham and all kinds of goodies so all that they had to do is show up.  I'm still envious...I am going home for a visit this week...had I known when I bought these tickets on sale last October that the Packers would go to the Superbowl, I'd have purchased accordingly.

This morning my parents were ecstatic and were going out to breakfast and then to the YMCA...together.

Then Dad tried to tell me but couldn't because he broke down. Mom came on the phone and told me that when the Packers won, Andy reached over and hugged my Dad and started to cry.  He said that the last time he'd seen a Packer Superbowl he was 6 years old and he wanted, more than anything, to watch this one with Dad.  I know how he feels and it meant the world to my parents.

I understand every word out of Lawrence O'Donnell's mouth.  I also understand all those nine to five and swing shift and three job and unemployed people in a little town where they have one little thing that matters.  The owners, the money, the obscenity of the difference between the have's and the have not's is irrelevant on game day.  It's time to watch the Packers.

HEY, PACKER FANS...YOU'RE THE CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD.

It matters.