MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Yesterday marked the most bittersweet day of the year, Labor Day, the holiday celebrated in the United States on the first Monday in September.
Labor Day is a celebration of the American labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
It’s a very important and worthwhile day, particularly in view of the madness that has enveloped our country, but until I reached high school, Labor Day was the day on the calendar marked in black and viewed with great dread, for it was the last day of the summer my brother and I didn’t have to go to school, and it was the day we lived under strict orders not to go wiseguy when adults at the VFW picnic asked how excited we were to be going back to school tomorrow.
“About as excited as I would be to get the mumps again, thanks.”
See, we weren’t allowed to say that.
Of course, for kids today I imagine Labor Day must be the year’s first destination day on the school calendar – the first three-day weekend – since they’ve already been back in class for a couple of weeks.
For a baseball fan the Labor Day weekend is bittersweet because there are so many great games and postseason races going on, which is what you want. But it also means that the final day of the season is not long off and that our daily companion for the past five months will soon be leaving us for the six longest and most miserable months of the calendar year.
Of course, thanks to MLB’s one-percent owners and the pending lockout they are going to impose, it is sure to be much longer than six months. But, as Scarlett O’Hara said, “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.”
The same bittersweet feelings exist for a tennis fan because Labor Day weekend brings the biggest and best weekend of the U.S. Open, the greatest tennis tournament of them all. But again, it also means that in a fast week the summer tennis season will be kaput, and the long, dreary indoor season – i.e winter – will be with us before we know it.
And naturally, Labor Day is the red letter day for most sports fans because it signifies football season being all-in. And whether you care to acknowledge it or not, in this country football is king. It is the Budweiser of all American sports, and with the high school and college seasons having been in full swing, the start of the evil NFL is just one day away. Thus, it was the football fan sitting fat and sassy on Labor Day, and justifiably so.
Yes, the NFL starts Wednesday night, as it previously seized the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday windows and now claims a stake to every day or night of the week other than Tuesday. For now, anyway.
And, yes, there will also be a game on Thursday before all of the other games are played on Sunday.
Oversaturation is clearly not a concern for the NFL because its foresight and logic are superseded by its greed.
For instance, the league will play nine games abroad this season in seven different countries, beginning with Thursday’s Rams-49ers game in Melbourne, Australia.
The NFL will play games in Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany and Mexico this season, and Commissioner Roger Goodell, who just received a four-year contract extension, has said that the league will eventually place a permanent team outside the U.S., with London, Mexico City, and cities in Germany frequently being discussed as top candidates, as the NFL’s screaming case of World Cup envy continues to flare.
Won’t lie, I watch every Sunday, even on Mondays and Thursdays depending on who’s playing, but not always. I do have the bug in the fall, but not the way I used to, because I don’t believe the actual game is as good or as entertaining as it once was.
Nor do I like NFL the entity, for it is owned and operated by despicable human beings who want you to throw your money to their corporate sports betting partners.
Nor do I believe the NFL. I believe the players who play the games. I just don’t believe the people who are in control of the outcomes of the games.
And there’s a lot of that going around. I watched the end of a college football game Saturday night from Ann Arbor, and an NFL game broke out.
Straight out of the NFL the TV Show playbook.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began. covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at mikeburke934@gmail.com. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT