Things on my mind.
I think we can all agree that the First Amendment is important, right? I mean, as the President of the United States, you don’t have the right to ban reporters from the White House because you don’t agree with what they are reporting (the truth by the way). There were already two other instances where the President has attempted this exact thing and both times the court’s have said, “not so fast!” Afterall, we don’t live in a country where the government wants to control things like the media. Or do we? And maybe we actually do. Just look at who owns all these news organizations. In the interest of time, I’ll let you do the research and maybe you should if you haven’t already. Anyone that is an independent journalist should do as much reporting as possible to continue to put pressure on exposing the truth and hypocrisy. I guess that is my mini rant about the First Amendment. The bottom line is, in this country, the government is not able to control the media.
This past weekend’s games in the NFL were largely boring. Bills played Thursday night and put on a show in their first game in the new Highmark Stadium. What a stadium, huh? Very European looking. I would have liked the roof to cover more like 90% of the seats in the stadium. That place is going to be loud and tough to play in regardless for opponents. The Giants play tonight, on Monday Night Football against the LA Rams. Don’t know what to expect to be honest. But I was impressed with how they played against the Dallas Cowbells (yes, I did that on purpose), last Sunday night.
My biggest beef with the NFL and just sports on television in general in this country is all the damn commercials. It’s simply about money. Whenever anyone presents a problem to you and you don’t know what the solution or answer is, follow the paper trail, folks. It’s ALWAYS about the money. Frankly it’s infuriating as a sports fan. The funny thing is, we as consumers have the power to change that and maybe don’t realize it. I mean for God’s sake, why are their commercials in overtime. Like get this Packers/Jets game off my television! Just end in a tie and spare us!
This sort of thing doesn’t fly in Europe. There are literally no commercials during sporting events in Europe. Not for soccer. Not for basketball. Not for ice hockey. Not for field hockey. Not for handball. Not for any sport. You know why? If they started doing that, people would revolt. We can do the same here, you know. But we’ve accepted it as our norm. Which is maybe why we’ve gotten to where we are in our country for so many different things.
As many of you know, if you’ve been listening and following the Throwing Bagels Podcast for the three or so years we’ve been doing this, I referee high school soccer as a certified New York State Referee and a certified United States Soccer Federation referee. To the guy at the Jesuit school I was refereeing at on Saturday afternoon that yelled from the stands, “C’mon buddy! Call it both ways! You were 50 yards behind the pay, c’mon,” after I gave a yellow card to the Jesuit home team captain, go f**k yourself. And then after I went to explain to the coach, why I gave the call I did against the Jesuit school’s captain, the same guy yelled, “Get back in position. Stop showing off.” Again, sir of a child that goes to a private Jesuit school, go f**k yourself. And also, you should be ashamed of yourself for even flapping your lips and embarrassing yourself. If you had any clue about the rules, you would have kept your mouth shut. Weird that these things always seem to happen at private Jesuit schools. Don’t think it’s a coincidence whatsoever give the current state of affairs in our country. (In retrospect, the yellow card may have been a little harsh, but the call was correct. Also, I went back to review some tape of that game of an incident in the first half to make sure I got it right, which I did. But in reviewing that video, I confirmed that I run like a skyscraper.).
Finally, I’ll leave you with this. It is important come November that you vote for anyone that is not associated with the current administration. And by that I mean, don’t vote for anyone that is not progressive and forward thinking. Or else we will just be in the same boat in four or eight years. And yes, I’m talking about the Mamdani’s of the world. That’s what we need. Not the career politicians that are serving their personal interests. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that we all want our government to work for the people.