Another terrific excerpt from Tuesday Morning Quarterback:
In the NFL there are high-scoring 45-42 games and low-scoring 13-9 games; games that feature the pass and games that feature the run; there are games where teams try wild things and games when teams go conservative; there are games decided by a few sudden big breaks and games decided by long accumulations of field-position maneuvers; there are games played in heat, cold, rain, and snow. In the NBA, pretty much every game ends 98-93.
And furthermore!
Why, if nothing else, African-American thinkers don’t fight this – glamorizing as it does the notion of skipping college, which is a formula for keeping African-Americans disadvantaged as a group – TMQ cannot grasp. At least such madness is unimaginable in the NFL, where college juniors are the youngest eligible. If anyone proposed allowing high-school players to jump directly to the NFL, football would laugh out loud. Now, could this approach – which is called “having standards” – possibly relate to the fact that NFL ratings remain strong and attendance keeps setting records while ratings and ticket sales for the NBA are in steady decline?