My new-found love for football (not the American version)

I'm watching the Major League Baseball playoffs as I write this (Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Cincinnati Reds in the National League wildcard series), but it's the rare time recently that I have had a baseball game on. 

The sports that I have enjoyed in the past just don't excite me much these days. Maybe my break from baseball has to do with my favorite team, the Tigers, being essentially unwatchable for the last month or so of the season (though they did actually beat the Cleveland Guardians today in the first game of their playoff series. So maybe there is life in them yet).

Football--or as the rest of the world outside of the U.S. knows it--"American football," hasn't grabbed me either. What it really comes down to is this: I am increasingly reluctant to sit down and watch a game that takes 3 1/2 hours to play with almost constant commercial interruptions.

Over the last three years, in a change that has been gradual, my sport of choice is Premier League football (or as we uncouth Americans refer to it, "soccer"). I am of the opinion that "soccer" is a pejorative, so henceforth I won't be calling the sport by that name in this post. It is football.

I have dipped my toe in football over the years (no pun intended). I played the game, poorly and sporadically, over the years. Then, our older son played the youth version, so there were many games and practices we went to. One year (2007), I was his team's coach because nobody else would volunteer to do it and the rec league was threatening to disband the team if it didn't find a coach. So I bumbled my way into "coaching" a dozen or so six-year-olds. At least the experience forced me to learn the rules of the game, though I jokingly say I was the most mediocre coach in youth soccer history. (Hey, I am pretty sure the kids had fun, and I suppose that is the most important part).

It was about 2022 or 2023 that I became enamored of the English Premier League. The games are on NBC and the USA network Saturday and Sunday mornings. Other games stream on Peacock. I can relax on a weekend morning with a cup of coffee and watch a game or two by around noon Eastern Standard Time and then be free to do whatever I want afterwards. 

Besides the convenient broadcast times, here are some other reasons I now love the Premier League and football:

1) The games are always exactly two hours long. (Okay, almost exactly two hours long. Every so often a game might go slightly longer based on whatever stoppage time the officials add on at the end. But even if the game goes over two hours, it's only by about five minutes or so).

2) Though I have now claimed a couple clubs as personal "favo[u]rites" (Liverpool FC and Fulham FC), I am not that emotionally invested in any of the clubs or games. This is actually beneficial, as it allows me to simply relax and enjoy the athleticism of the players as well as the atmosphere and ambience of the stadium/grounds. 

3) I enjoy the game. I love the flow and the fact that timeouts don't exist. Thus, the only commercial breaks come at halftime. (The sheer number of timeouts and commercial breaks in American football and basketball are absurd. Thankfully, baseball is a bit better in that regard).

4) It feels like I'm taking a little trip to England every time I watch a Premier League game. If it's a game at Craven Cottage in Fulham, I can pretend I had a pre-match pint at a nearby pub and am inside this historic football grounds along the banks of the Thames in west London. If the game is at Anfield in Liverpool, I can imagine myself in the crowd singing "You'll Never Walk Alone."  Now that I have finally spent significant time in England (for real), I can visualize these cities and the locations of these football grounds. Premier League scratches my Anglophilia itch.

5) The Premier League seems so much simpler and streamlined than American sports leagues. There are 20 clubs in the league and they all play each other twice during the season (once at home and once on the road). The club that has the most points (3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw) after 38 games is crowned the champion. There are no playoffs to muddy it up (with some low-achieving team sneaking  into the playoffs and getting hot, as often happens in American sports leagues). The team that proves itself to be the best during the season is the champion. 

I have no idea how to end this particular post, so I will just leave it like that.