I made a mistake

by Crom

I made a mistake.

In all fairness it was an honest mistake. Anyone could have made the same kind of mistake that I made, but then I might be one of the few people who realizes it was a mistake in the first place. It was innocent, and for the most part no one got hurt. No one that is except myself. Since most mistakes are lessons in life I can take what I learned from this experience and apply it accordingly later on in life.

I made the mistake of assuming that something would be on TV on a Sunday at 2 in the afternoon.

Some of you might be asking yourselves “Uh, sometimes there’s nothing on TV, that’s life.” Or “Why the hell were you watching TV anyways?” Well, I think I answered the latter already: I MADE A MISTAKE. BUT, let me clear one thing up. There was SOMETHING on TV at that time, and that people is what made this whole thing such a gross mistake; such a vast oversight on my part.

Golf.

Golf was on the Tellie, and friends there’s nary a thing on earth that’s as useless as golf on TV. I have nothing against Golf, I’ve played it many times in my life and I enjoyed the games. I’m not good at it by any measure, whoever I’m with usually agrees with me not to keep score; we’re usually a gong show. But, have you ever seriously watched golf on TV? I don’t mean you were changing channels and stopped to find out the score, or that you always watch it. I mean have you ever seriously considered what the hell you were watching? You’re watching a group of finely dressed people march around a grassy area hitting tiny balls with metal sticks in an attempt to land said balls into a hole no larger then a coke bottle. A white ball, usually against white sky. With sand and water.

Some people ask how golf really got started, since it seems to be a fairly odd game. Well, once again I must blame my heritage for something. Damn Scots. The various elements on the course are easy to identify with Scottish landscape: rocks, sand, water, grass, sheep…err… Anyways, Scots used to hit rocks into gopher holes with sticks, starting the tradition of “Golf”. Of course what boggles my mind now is the almost insatiable amount of Television coverage that the PGA, Master’s, WPGA etc receive. Especially considering the same goddamn players have been on top for the LAST 30 YEARS. Once in awhile you see a fresh face, but for the most part Lee Trevino, The Bear, Ben Hogan et al. are still fresh on the lips of avid golf enthusiasts and some of them are DEAD.

To top it all off golfers are now making the same foolish monetary demands that other athletes have been making. More money from TV coverage, more money from ticket sales, Blah, blah, blah, you know, there are a lot of people who would be happy just to make enough money playing golf to SURVIVE, forget being a millionaire. If I could get paid the same salary as an entry-level computer programmer to roam around the grasslands playing golf, I’d laugh until my ribs broke.

Of course that goes for just about any of the sports we as a society watch. Something that needs to be remembered is that you guys are playing a game. You make good money for playing said game. You have jobs doing something that the rest of us did at recess or lunchtime when we were kids. Granted Tether ball is never going to go Hollywood, and King’s Court is limited in it’s appeal to the television watching community, but I think it’s about time we gained the perspective and brought the game back into it, make it fun again.

There’s a reason I say this: I expected to see something that sparked my interest and entertained me when I turned on that television, and I was taught the error of my ways. I won’t make the same mistake twice… and I doubt everyone else will either.

Crom