Skip to content

Ad Disclosure

This article/post contains references to products or services from one or more of our advertisers or partners. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products or services.

Sports

Love/Hate Relationship: The greatest fall season in American history

Kevin Duffey

By Kevin Duffey

Published:

Nobody is lukewarm on anything anymore. That’s life in 2021. You either love it or hate it. So, let’s overreact to some stuff …

I’m a week late on this, but Mississippi State’s Tanner Allen. One look at this guy, and you immediately know he drops bombs. The guy just oozes baseball. And the best part is his pants. Can you call them pants? The above the knee baseball pant is leading my 2021 wardrobe/uniform power rankings as of now. I love this guy, and I love these pants.

The NBA Finals start tonight, and the biggest story is … an internal spat at ESPN between Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor? Surely normal people don’t care about this, no? I get it if you’re in media. It’s a media “scandal.” Perhaps this shows that ratings for this year’s Finals aren’t going to be good. While this year’s ratings might be down, I do think it’s positive for the league to have some new guys win the title (e.g. Giannis, Booker, etc.). In on new teams winning championships, out on media stories that don’t really affect the broadcast. Anyway, do NBA broadcasts that don’t include Charles Barkley even exist?

Some big-time TV series are coming back this fall. Yellowstone will be out this fall. As will a new season of HBO’s Succession. Is this going to be the great fall of TV in American history? I don’t think it’s out of the question. College football Saturdays are going to be incredible. We’ve got full stadiums and a return of normal with respect to our favorite sport. Then, we’ve got Yellowstone and Succession on Sunday nights? Wow. Clear my weekends until Christmas, please.

How terrible is air travel right now? I’ve taken four flights in the past 10 days, and let’s just say, it is painful. The airports are packed, and there’s not enough staff for anything. Seriously. Anything. While dealing with a 4-hour delay, I was waiting in line at Starbucks when they announced, “We are out of espresso, only coffee remains.” Then after finally flying and landing at my destination, we had to sit on the plane for awhile because there was nobody to man the jet bridge for the arriving plane. If you’re traveling right now, drive if possible.

When I saw that The Ringer did an oral history on the classic Terminator 2: Judgement Day movie, I thought I’d give that movie a rewatch. It’s on Netflix, and I haven’t watched it end-to-end in at least 10 years. This movie is incredible. Why don’t we have movies like this anymore? Look, I do the Marvel films. They’re fun. But where are the movies like T2? T2 gave us peak Arnold (I think?), a sequel that was better than the original, iconic scenes (like the T-1000 coming out of the checkered floor in the mental hospital), iconic lines (“Come with me if you want to live”) and just great ’90s things such as cigarettes and Guns N’ Roses music. If you are needing some entertainment to fill the gap between now and the start of college football, give Terminator 2 a run along with other ’90s action flicks.

Hurricanes, tropical storms, whatever. It’s early July and we already have named storms approaching in Florida? I hate hurricane season.

How beautiful are full crowds? I’ll speak for myself when I say that I took crowds for granted even as part of the TV-watching experience. Two sporting moments jumped out at me recently that really felt like “We’re back” moments. First, the Phil Mickelson victory at the PGA Championship was awesome, but the crowd was even better. The crowd almost swallowed up Phil on the 18th fairway. Just amazing. Then, watching Trae Young taunt the Madison Square Garden crowd during the Hawks/Knicks series in the NBA playoffs. That was just great stuff. Crowds back mean sports are back. College stadiums this fall are going to be out of control.

I just purchased RBI Baseball 21 for my kids on the Xbox. I immediately played my 8-year old to ensure he knows I’m better than him. Thankfully, I was able to figure out the controls, which are way more complicated than they were “back in the day.” We’re high on the sport of baseball these days in my home. We play little league, we do hitting practice quite a bit, we throw the ball in the yard, we play baseball on the Xbox. But we essentially watch zero MLB on television. It’s an interesting situation, and I doubt I’m a unique situation. How does MLB get the younger generations into baseball? I’m not sure, but perhaps they should start with above-the-knee pants.

Kevin Duffey

A graduate of the University of Florida and founder of Saturday Down South, Kevin is a college football enthusiast.

You might also like...

2026 RANKINGS

presented by rankings

Games

Word Searches

Crosswords

Ciphers

Quizzes