The National Football League strike came as such a relief.
After working 50 hours a week for the sports department of a small-town daily this summer, I was sick of sports, and ready to give up sportswriting for good.
My rural, one-stoplight town has one thing in abundance: bars. When all the college kids go home for the summer, these bars fill up with beer-drinking, tobacco-spitting, tavern league softball junkies.
My first duty at work each morning was to report on the tavern league's exploits from the night before. Facing that dirty stack of game reports at six in the morning always seemed to bring to mind all the things I hate about sports. Things like:
.John McEnroe, Bo Jackson, and Brian Bosworth
.baseball pitchers that throw beanballs
.football cheerleaders who can't tell a fourth down from a touchdown
.the format of the National Hockey League playoffs
.field hockey and lacrosse skirts
.the smell of Ben Gay
.bleacher seats in the endzone
.the World Wrestling Federation
.pushy parents at Little League
.drug testing
.college football Bowl games
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