We’re receiving near-constant gifts from sports these days
Even if a lump of coal came your way this Christmas, here’s a consoling thought.
As sports fans, we are already ahead. We’re living through a period that is handing out gifts regularly.
You don’t always realize such things when they’re happening, but sports are on an absolute tear, providing us with a constant thread of narrative entertainment as the New Year approaches and with the promise of much more to come.
With 2024 beckoning, the closing stages of the National Football League season guarantee to bring unceasing intrigue. Last season’s Super Bowl duelers, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, are undeniably flawed but absolutely still dangerous. (The Eagles, by the way, should be in your Christmas Day viewing plans with a showdown against the New York Giants at 4:30 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app.)
Mr. Irrelevant, Brock Purdy of the San Francisco 49ers, is making his nickname hilariously inaccurate with a concerted tilt at the MVP award, dominating the NFC, while the AFC is a high-quality minefield where even 11-6 may not make sure of a postseason spot.
There are characters to pontificate on, and for some reason their stories seem bigger than ever. Aaron Rodgers was somehow one of the most talked-about athletes in sports despite playing all of four snaps on the year, there’s some pop star-tight end love thing going on, and then there is Dak Prescott and the Cowboys, always watchable for all kinds of reasons, and capable of fluctuating from brilliant to dire on a weekly whim.
College football’s playoff comes even sooner than the Super Bowl, having already delivered on the thing the sports lover adores more than anything – argument – all taking place amid the biggest and most significant period of upheaval the game has ever seen.
The semifinals party is just around the corner, Florida State isn’t invited and is salty to the point of distraction about it, and whatever happens in the coming weeks will have the twin effect of crowning a national champion but probably also sparking more discussion about the rights and wrongs of the last-ever four-team field.
That’s right, we’re switching to 12 next year, as well as a whirlwind round of musical chairs as conferences reshuffle, realign or even run the risk of disappearing altogether.
Baseball is booming, at least if the financials of the latest stretch of free agent contracts awarded is anything to go by, headlined of course by the grandaddy of them all, Shohei Ohtani’s much-debated, hugely-deferred whopper of 10 years and $700 million.
Of all the unique things the Japanese sensation has done in MLB, that contract is a special kind of outlier, and serves the rare distinction of being outrageously expensive and probably a massive bargain at the same time.
So much new stuff is going on or coming up that it is hard to keep pace. The NBA’s in-season tournament was another attempt at improvement that found some early gains, while Major League Soccer can legitimately say it has the best player of modern times lighting things up, just a year removed from finally winning the World Cup.
Lionel Messi, LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes all have been doing their thing at the highest level imaginable for years. The subtle and not-so-subtle changes we are going through at present aren’t so much tied to personnel, but to evolution, innovation and the raw reality that sports gives us a snapshot of all the things in life that people like to gossip about; competition, money, celebrity, controversy.
Sports don’t end up being stashed in our bookcase, or a drawer, like so many sad presents. They are the gift that keeps on going, and they don’t even need wrapping up in pretty paper.
Happy holidays, indeed.
