Football vs. The Bachelor

Ok can we please talk about sports for a minute? Look I love college football and follow my team religiously. I created a shift schedule with 15 people and camped outside the stadium overnight for our rivalry game and was even on ESPN in the fan section many times over because our seats were THAT good. But now that I’m married, a new world has opened up to me and I DON'T LIKE IT.

To preface this post: It is not meant as a judgement since I watch most of everything listed, it’s an observation that I think has not been considered before.

I was never raised to waste time or watch much tv. If you were bored, you read a book, practiced piano, did homework or *gasp* do some chores! My mother had many philosophies and one was that she wanted to raise “thinking individuals,” so she taught us to be efficient with our time and learn as much as possible. For every “junk” book she called it, you needed to read a “should” book. Or a book that taught you something like philosophy, business, biographies etc. She classified “junk” as magazines, romance novels, shows like laguna beach or the hills, anything that provided you with knowledge that would not make you a successful and contributing member of society.

In my adulthood, I loosened up a bit. My group of friends used to get together to watch the Bachelor/Bachelorette on Monday nights. A one hour show would turn into three hours as we all screamed at the tv, argued about the characters, argued about each other's preferences etc. It was a weekly event that brought us all together and I will always treasure that time of my life. I also got addicted to Grey’s Anatomy during that time and would watch 1-2 episodes before bed every night. I still read plenty of should books but now have a little more balance between work and play.

Part of my aversion to these types of shows was 1. The way I was raised but also 2. The way I heard people speak about others who enjoyed those types of shows. I had a lot of guy friends in college and they used to make fun of girls for watching The Bachelor or Bachelorette. If you watched Keeping Up With the Kardashians? Well that’s surefire intellectual exile to them. My very accomplished women friends would often criticize other women who watched this vein of television and yet...no one seems to have the same issue with sports!

Why on earth not? They're the exact same thing!

First of all, each game is not an hour, but 3-4 so a one hour long Bachelor, Bachelorette, Grey’s Anatomy, Kardashians, episode is a quarter the time of the average college football game. Even if the fans’ have their teams that they root for, they still watch all of the other games in their teams conference. That can often lead to two games back to back which is an entire work day’s worth of time! Then there’s the reddit discussion boards, ESPN commentary, ESPN App, and they all talk about it together. They know all the players, coaches, who’s trading who, what scandal is going on, who was fired, and on and on the useless knowledge goes. This information benefits them in NO way, does not help the majority of them further their careers, or make them better and contributing members of society.

And yet-if you know the backstories of the Kardashians, Bachelor contestants, or what happened last week on Grey’s Anatomy you’re “basic” and yet Sports fans get no judgement passed on them? How are the two any different?

Both parties know useless knowledge about the participants of the shows they watch, love the drama and excitement of the moment, have to watch it live so as to avoid spoilers, use the information as talking points with their peers. And yet one has a different intellectual stigma attached but also consumes far less time than the other?

It's time we changed the conversation and started seeing sports for what they really are: a drama filled reality show.

Now go forth and watch tv-in moderation.