American Football
Living in New England, it’s been pretty easy over the past eight years to really get into the National Football League. Obviously, it was tough this season watching our beloved Patriots not make the playoffs despite an excellent regular season record.
Now that the championship games are out of the way, and the line-up for the Super Bowl is set, I’d like to call out all the reasons over the past season the game keeps getting harder to love.
1. Injuries – this season was wrought with injuries right from the start, and serious career ending, life ending injuries. We’d like to see some more significant measures in place to protect players.
2. Poor officiating – at times the calls this season seemed so far removed from what actually transpired that it’s difficult to not think the whole game is a farce. Bad officiating is starting to become the norm, rather than the exception. While safety is our biggest concern, our second biggest is the integrity of the game itself.
3. This is our boo-hoo one. Patriots out at 11-5? Only the second team in NFL history to finish the regular season with this record, and miss the playoffs. I suppose there’s a reason for that. Teams aren’t SUPPOSED to miss the playoffs with dominating records like that. Perhaps an overhaul of the ranking system is in order when far inferior teams are going to the playoffs by virtue of winning WEAK divisions. Then again, maybe we should all just move our franchises somewhere they don’t KNOW how to play football.
All griping aside though, this is by far our favorite sport, and we still enjoy watching it even when we don’t agree with everything that happens. Here’s to next year.
Dennis Anoli
jon zack