What if the best never ever was because...

My homepage when I fire up the old Internet is MSN.com. I should probably switch to Google or something else more interesting, but for some reason I don't. The answer is probably a kind of personal inertia, having MSN implanted on my mind as the natural starting point for my Internet adventures. As a result, every time I jump on the interwebs I get hit with this:

"Still going strong: Vegas stripper at 80"
" 'Controversy' over Obama statement"
"Something something stupid something"
"2 week old story we're just now getting around to"
"Horribly inaccurate and inflammatory headline"
"Is your husband secretly gay?"

And my personal favorite:

"What if gas was $_____ a gallon?" With every increasing crazy numbers filling in the blank. Usually this is shortened even more to "$__ a gallon gas?!?!?"

We're a society of short attention spans. TV is probably mostly to blame, but there's no doubt the Internet contributes to our mental de-evolution. A portal site like MSN needs to quickly generate clicks in order to survive, so it comes as no surprise at all that they short punchy headlines all over their page. So I don't really blame them for doing what they feel they must in order to stay in business.

But man do they suck. If I had to guess I'd say that 50% of the "hot stories" are at least a week old. Probably 90% are grossly inaccurate, inflammatory, and lacking in any journalistic value. And of course they all lead directly to an MSN created story by some hack writer who either gives completely bland and obvious "coverage" of the subject matter or is totally off base and manipulative with the whole thing.

The gas one always cracks me up. As we all know, we're having a little bit of a gas price problem. Of course, its the exact same fucking gas price problem that happens every single damn year in the summer that no one ever seems to realize is coming because we're a nation of spoiled idiots. Since the start of this most recent annual price jump, I've opened my browser to see that blank in the headline be filled in with ever increasing numbers. They started at 4, then 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, and I think I even saw 15 once. I think its finally leveled off where they go with $10, because its a price that seems both realistically close and scary to everyone. Of course, gas will eventually get to $10 a gallon, probably within the next 15 years, so the whole concept of this being some doomsday scenario is laughable.

This whole rant is pointless, I know, since it won't change anything and I accept that their are reasons (not good reasons, but reasons) that all this is the way it is. In fact, the only reason I even took the time to write it was the most recent headline I saw today:

"Is 2008 the best sports year ever?" accompanied by pictures of Elisha Manning, Raffie Nadal, and Tiger Woods. I admit, its been a fun year to be a sports fan. But my distaste for subjective rankings and hyperbole are both strong, and the premise of this article is full of both. Whether or not a sports year is great depends an awful lot on whether or not your team (or the team you bet on) managed to pull it out.

I actually read the article, and it makes a fair number of good points. Of course, it completely neglects the exciting Euro 08 tourney, much to the chagrin of 50% of the idiot commentors and the pleasure of the other 50% . No mention at all is made of Jason Giambi's awesome mustache. It also ignores the very basic problem that the year's only halfway over. We have no clue about the pennant races. The World Series. Half the golf and tennis majors. The ENTIRE NFL and NCAA seasons. That's right: the most important months of the national pastime, and the ENTIRE season for the country's favorite sport have yet to be played.

But biggest problem is that the very idea of a "best sports year ever" is horribly awfully crazily absurd, since we can't even agree upon which of our beloved leisure activities even constitutes a sport. (That's an upcoming rant for another time, but its true). And the implication that, since there was a mostly boring Super Bowl upset, one great tennis match and a great US Open final somehow makes this the best "ever" is equally all those things I just said. Guess what? Someone won Wimbledon last year too. And the year before. The same is true for the Super Bowl and the US Open and and the US tiddly winks championships. Lets look at the things that actually sucked about this year in sports:

1)Pretty much the whole BCS, including the fact that LSU won it all in a lame title game.
2)Tiger Woods is now hurt and unable to play the rest of the year.
3)Brett Favre retires... then doesn't... then does... then MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY YOU DRAMA QUEEN!!!!
4) LT and Phillip Rivers get hurt at a critical time, all but handing the AFC title game to the Patriots.

5)My Lakers choked royally in the Finals and now Boston has 2 of the 3 major sports titles, with the Pats all but set to win the Super Bowl again.

6) The Mitchell Report and its aftermath. Granted it was a fun day when it came out, but in reality it was a huge downer, the final nail in the coffin for baseball's resurgence. Plus it vindicated Jose Canseco, which is awful in itself.

7-10)The Olympics will probably suck too, between Beijing having the air quality of London circa 1860 and NBC's horrible practice of tape delaying everything and then trying to spoon feed us 5 minutes of edited action at a time interlaced with 25 minutes of sappy stupid human interest stories. Meanwhile, if a fan has even the smallest interest in an event they'll just go look up the results a full 18 hours before they might possibly broadcast, if they are at all. Good to know we wait 4 years and spend billions for these games so we can learn about the results in a box score. Plus I know we're gonna get screwed over at least a few times by judges friendly to the host country who are trying to inflate China's medal count. Just like we do when we host the Olympics.

11-20) NASCAR still exists.

Of course the great thing about being a hack writer for FOXSPORTS.com or ESPN.com is you can write total BS like this, and if it turns out to be not true no one will ever ever remember and call you out on it. And then next year when 3 or 4 exciting things happen in sports and you're facing a deadline, you can basically write the same article. And these guys get paid for this. Life is so unfair.

That was pretty long. Maybe I should just switch my homepage.