{"id":703,"date":"2006-12-03T20:22:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-03T20:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html"},"modified":"2006-12-03T20:22:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-03T20:22:00","slug":"christmas-and-college-sports-bah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html","title":{"rendered":"Christmas and College Sports: Bah Humbug!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing this after having just turned off the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) Selection Show, that is airing in prime time on the FOX, even though there&#8217;s still a half-hour left to go. The show&#8217;s now on its fourth commercial break, having yet to reveal what the show promised: The college football matchups for the popular Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta bowl games.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m tired of feeling like a seal waiting for the next little sardine if I just stick around through all the commercials that is paying the network&#8217;s bills. So I&#8217;m outta here.<\/p>\n<p>For that matter, I\u2019m tired of the BCS thing entirely. Sports used to be about rooting for your favorite team, your local team, your alma mater, or (perhaps) the players on your fantasy team.<br \/>Now, it\u2019s more like the world of boxing, where we\u2019re supposed to root for our team to &#8220;win&#8221; some voting derby and computer logarithm just so they are <em>allowed<\/em> to play in some game, so <em>then<\/em> we can cheer for them. ESPN now stands for Ever-Selling-Promoting-Nation and FOX Sports could stand for False-Offers-&amp;-Xtras, which extend the games and dilutes the coverage. It&#8217;s boring because it&#8217;s a parlor game. It&#8217;s confusing because the system is flawed. It&#8217;s sour not only because someone&#8217;s always disappointed, but because they&#8217;re playing bingo with the lives of college kids. It&#8217;s just wrong.<\/p>\n<p>And especially during the Christmas season, I\u2019d rather watch authentic stuff. The only reason I watch sports is because it\u2019s always been the truest reality TV. But those times, they are-a-changin&#8217;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing this after having just turned off the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) Selection Show, that is airing in prime time on the FOX, even though there&#8217;s still a half-hour left to go. The show&#8217;s now on its fourth commercial break, having yet to reveal what the show promised: The college football matchups for the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Christmas and College Sports: Bah Humbug!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christmas and College Sports: Bah Humbug!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m writing this after having just turned off the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) Selection Show, that is airing in prime time on the FOX, even though there&#8217;s still a half-hour left to go. The show&#8217;s now on its fourth commercial break, having yet to reveal what the show promised: The college football matchups for the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-12-03T20:22:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Douglas Howe\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Christmas and College Sports: Bah Humbug!","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Christmas and College Sports: Bah Humbug!","og_description":"I\u2019m writing this after having just turned off the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) Selection Show, that is airing in prime time on the FOX, even though there&#8217;s still a half-hour left to go. The show&#8217;s now on its fourth commercial break, having yet to reveal what the show promised: The college football matchups for the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2006-12-03T20:22:00+00:00","author":"Douglas Howe","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html","name":"Christmas and College Sports: Bah Humbug!","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-12-03T20:22:00+00:00","dateModified":"2006-12-03T20:22:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/a05dabea7186e9c2898a41a6713aa98a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/12\/christmas-and-college-sports-bah.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Christmas and College Sports: Bah Humbug!"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/a05dabea7186e9c2898a41a6713aa98a","name":"Douglas Howe","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7e3\/7e32c99b36f419c4c074635d65150806x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7e3\/7e32c99b36f419c4c074635d65150806x96.jpg","caption":"Douglas Howe"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/dhowe"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}