There's NO Bitching In Sports

Credit: LASportsblog.bravehost.com

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The writer is in no way trying to be offensive or insulting to females. He is using the menstrual process and it's effects on some women as an example of what sports fans are current acting like on a consistent basis, not just 5-7 days a month.)
By: Nathaniel Gordon e-mail : LASportsblog@gmail.com

There is no bitching in sports, no exceptions. You might complain about the field quality or appeal to a referee or umpire about a bad call, but you never bitch about it. When you bitch about a call in Basketball you get a technical foul and in baseball you get thrown out of the game. In football bitching will cost you 15 yards, in hockey you might get 2 minutes in the penalty box or a yellow card in Soccer/World Football. Basically you are punished if you let a complaint spiral into a whiny bitch fest. However in the last couple of months it seems that bitching in sports has become more then acceptable. What disgust me more then ever is the appearance that all fan bases seem to be collectively on their 'rag', bitching and moaning more then ever. Before I go head first into who is bitching and what they are bitching about, we must separate complaining from bitching.

I call the following symptoms the "Johnny Drama circle of bitchdom " if you, your fan base, your team or your local sports pundits are doing any of the following then they fall into the "Johnny Drama circle of bitchdom" and must take significant steps to improve upon this problem:

The Sport Is Doomed Bitch: "Oh no all the games are fixed. The Suns were robbed by David Stern and crooked refs. Pitchers can't get out of the 6th inning, when I was young a pitcher would throw 3 complete games back-to-back-to-back in 110 degree heat, butt naked with piranhas biting his testicles." If you hear this or anything similar to this from a pundit or friend tell them to "cram it up your cram hole LeFlur" cause you don't wanna hear it. Our professional sports aren't doomed, to put American sports into perspective there have been crooked refs and match fixing front office employees in European sports, especially soccer for 75 years and yet they seem to persevere. This bitch especially piss me off when I hear it from the sports writers, when did they become so intent on the doom of sports? If this sports-thing goes to shit, what will they have to bitch (or write and make a living) about?

Our Team Is Doomed Bitch: "Oh no, Kobe is going to Chicago for 3 draft picks and a used condom. What are we gonna do now that Jason Schmidt is injured? What will happen to us if Vick is playing soap hockey with inmates? How will we stop the Yankee's from making up a 10 game deficit? What will we do if KG leaves in the off-season, how will the team ever move on?" First of all, man up! You support your team because you love your team, not just because of the players on the team or because the team is winning. How will you manage without KG, the same way the other 29 teams do, by getting other players. How will you keep the Yankee's from catching the Sox? The Sox gotta put together a few decent games in a row that's how. I don't know what you do with 3 draft picks and a used condom but I assume you spend the picks on 3 Europeans that never come over to the NBA and you put the condom over jim buss' head and hope he gets the point. Basically I'm telling you to stop bitching because your team survived before your current situation and they will survive afterward, and so will the fans. When your team goes through adversity it should make you a stronger and better fan, not a bag of bleeding tampon filled complaints.

The 'This is a Tragedy Bitch': I won't even state an example for this one because they're are way too many to chose from; from Barbaro to Rafa Palmero it makes me sick. Anytime there is more then a little bit of drama in professional sports the fans treat it as a national tragedy. Michael Vick fighting dogs isn't a tragedy, it's just a group of sick bastards fulfilling sick pleasures. People in today's world quickly lose perspective on the current situation, as well as
the pass. The "Bonds Dilemma" (any time an athlete is most likely guilty of something you can't prove it's the Bonds Dilemma.) is a pain in the ass, but it doesn't deserve multichannel coverage for 160 days leading up to 756, it hardly deserves single channel coverage. So many people are upset about Bonds having "the most storied record in American Sports" and they call it a tragedy that a 'cheat' could have the record. News flash, as many pitchers are on the juice as batters or and in case you forgot, Pete Rose BET ON GAMES HE MANAGED! That is horrible, Rose could of been throwing games for personal profit (although to be fair he has time and time again stated that he only bet on the Reds to win games.) Bonds is just keeping up with the times, and the times are filled with cheaters. This isn't a tragedy... watching a plane fly into an American sky scrapper was tragedy.

The 'Our GM is Incompetent' Bitch: "How could Paxon pass on making a big off-season move? What the hell is Ned Colletti doing, I could do his job! Travis Knight and Sam Jacobson?!?!?" If you have ever been a fan of a sports team you have felt at one point or another that you could head the day-to-day team operations. The current generation of video games, web sites and books have closed the gap between GM and fan but the gap is still Snake River Gorge big. I was a victim of this particular bitch all last week, feeling that I could do a better job then Ned Colletti because he was making "two-step player acquisitions" (The 'GM Two-Step' is when you tell your fans that a signing or trade is taking the team 1 step forward, when it's really taking you 2 steps back.) Danny Ainge gets raked over the coals monthly by Bill Simmons, however I don't count that because Ainge is almost as incompetent as it gets and after reading tons of Simmons' work, I'm confident he really could do a better job then Ainge, but that doesn't stand for the rest of us; even if you GM IS a two-stepper.

The "This isn't my Sport" Bitch: It's a warm and clear Sunday afternoon and your settling in for a great afternoon of football. You call the buddies and before you know it your place is the social center of your world, until one jackass brings it all down. That one guy who openly and loudly bitches about the game your watching because it "isn't my sport and I don't like it". Usually there isn't a very good reason for why they don't like the sport, it's either boring or stupid or most likely they sucked at playing it as a kid and were teased endlessly about it. Regardless this guy can screw up even semi-enjoyable sporting events. If your watching boxing he wants to tell you how great UFC is. If your watching NFL he wants to talk NBA, if your watching NBA he wants to talk NASCAR and if your watching Soccer he wants to talk NFL. This guy will take cheap shots to piss you off and get you emotional, then when you get upset he'll say something like "see it's a panzi sport supported by panzis!" or "it doesn't matter what you say it still sucks". Damn it, these bastards need to be dealt with, this is also knowing as pulling a "Jay Marriotti". Bitching about a Big 3 sports because it isn't one of your niche sports and bitching about a niche cause it isn't Big 3 is equally as bad. Considering that the only 2 sports that draw average crowds in this country of over 30,000 per a game are baseball and football, I don't see where everyone gets off as defensive about the popularity about any given sport.

2006 Regular Season Attendance Figures:

NFL - 67,738
GER. Bundesliga: 37,644
English Premiership: 34,459
MLB: 31,423
NBA: (didn't find official number for league but it's in the 20,000s.)
and finally

The Uninformed Bitcher: You've seen the ESPNews commercials and all of us have a friend who says things like "Kobe Bryant sucks man, not only is he a ball hog, but he doesn't make a lot of the shots he jacks up." The preceding quote was made by a guy I know last season, he said it in the middle of a late January game in which Kobe put up 45 on 48 percent shooting plus 5 assist to only 1 turnover. I shook my head in dismay as I quickly ran off Kobe's season stats to date, shutting Brent's face quicker then OJ can say "acquittal." The point is that everyone has a friend, or at least knows someone who thinks they know everything about sports, but it's obvious to everyone that they hardly have a clue. They will come in a room and start bitching about whatever sport is on the TV trying to sound like the expert in the room. This is also known as the "novice sports fraud" but for the purpose of this article it all falls under the Uninformed Bitcher.'

These are the 6 types of bitching I've heard seemingly non stop since the start of summer and it's really pissing me off. What happened to enjoying sports because they are an escape from real life, instead of treating them like Entertainment Tonight. What Donaughy did was a shocking development, but I don't need Rachel Nichols outside of his estate for 20 straight days reporting of basically nothing. I don't need my sports to feel like a direct hyperlink to TMZ.com, that's why we have TMZ.com in the first place to fill the void in our lives where we bitch about nothing, especially nothing of any importance. So I'm gonna throw on my Dodger Jersey and Blue Dodger Fitted Cap cause the sun is shining and I'm not complaining; after all I'm a Dodger Fan. Through all the 'GM Two-Steps' and 'Bonds Dilemma's we're faced with I can always Wait 'Til Next Year, and I'm not bitching about it.