Why I Don’t Care About Tonight’s BCS Game
Tonight’s showdown between Oregon and Auburn (currently underway) isn’t just an eerie foreshadowing of what sports manufacturer’s design team will reign supreme in the new year (Nike wins that one by a mile, but I digress). It’s an eerie foreshadowing of tomorrow’s news cycle. And I for one am not comfortable with the inevitable media swarm that will surround tonight’s game in the wake of the attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’, D-Ariz., life last Saturday.
This BCS Championship gives Americans a dumb excuse to take a too-soon, too-abrupt pause from the nascent civil discourse that surrounded this terrible tragedy: We finally seemed to be talking, as opposed to yelling, about political rhetoric, gun laws and the security of those we elect to serve. Now I worry we’ll go back to our selfish habits of superficial instant gratification with a focus on the outcome of tonight’s game.
I am in no way saying the BCS Championship should have been postponed, on the contrary. The coincidence that this event is taking place in the very state where Jared Loughner murdered innocent people is a testament to American resilience; tonight we fight bullets with beer brats. I just hope that in today’s ever-accelerating media cycle, the inevitability of the next big headline (Ducks Win! Tigers Win! Heisman Winner Cam Newton Says Something Stupid!) doesn’t deter from the story of this weekend: How one deplorable act may have caused America to start getting its collective act together.
