RE: NFL Realignment
So a little divergent, but there are certain reasons I watch "College Football" and have completely abandoned the pro game. (Some of these reasons carry over to professional baseball as well, though I still love the sport of baseball and still attend games...but nowhere near the amount I used to.)
First, I love the pageantry and tradition around the College game. The band. The cheerleaders. The cheers. The uniqueness of the stadiums. All of that "stuff" you get in the College experience. The pro game either never had this stuff or lost it. The stadiums are mostly interchangeable and way too big. All the teams play the same, boring music...and way too loud. (This also happens on the college level and it bugs the hell out of me. Though, UC, in my experience does less of it than others...thank God!) Where there are rivalries, it is between fan bases; the players are professionals who may not even be there the next year so they don't often care about "the hated rival."
Second, I love the "Carry-over" of teams from season to season. Yes, the college game has changed somewhat in that you can see players "leave early," but you can still watch a kid from recruiting "commit" and progress through "red shirt" to starter. The names get etched into your brain because these kids are something of an investment...and the good ones will "always be a Bearcat." The pros, on the other hand, are mostly mercenary...and the game really doesn't make a lot of bones about it. They don't necessarily play in Cincinnati "because they love the city," but because they got the best deal to play here and when a better deal comes along, they'll gladly play in Kansas City or Miami just as much as in Cincy. And God forbid you get a d'bag QB who "retires" just to get out of his contract...
(And yeah, you're seeing this more in College BB with the "one and dones." And we did have a whole series of players under Minter who were every bit as mercenary as some of the pros... But I hate that.)
Finally, I think some of these kids just play harder while they're in college. (Minor league baseball has this as well.) When these kids are scrapping, trying to catch someone's attention, they just tend to work harder. When they have signed the big $$$ contract, all too often the tendency is to just coast along. Mixing metaphors here, but it's like Corbin Bernsen's character "Roger Dorn" in the movie "Major League." Give me a group of kids scrapping to make their name any day.
When I lived closer to Cincinnati, I was aware of the Bengals but I never would have paid for a ticket to go see them. The one time I was in PBS it was to watch the Bearcats play OSU...and I thought it was a pretty nice stadium. If the Brown family wants to abandon PBS, they'd have a tough case in my mind because I think it's a stadium that can easily be remodeled to keep it among the nicer places to watch a game. But again, this is part-and-parcel of why I like the College experience over the pro game: give me Nippert any day of the week over even PBS. Part of why I fell in love with the Bearcats was the gem that is Nippert...and that's why I get so bothered over some of the modifications to it.
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