I grew up watching and loving the Detroit Tigers. Now I can't even sit through a regular season game. I think our attention spans are dwindling, fast.
In the past year, two things have become true for me.
(1) I've discovered Jomez and CCDG for the first time. I hadn't followed pros anywhere since the late '90s when I was there in person watching final nines at a few big tournaments and the 2000 worlds. I never thought to even care about watching footage on the internet.
The quality is so good that I'm hooked.
What we have is top-notch quality coverage for a sport that's inherently awesome, the only sport I can think of (maybe besides fishing) where the main idea of the game is changing the projectile itself to suit differing challenges.
I'm watching a sport I love to play myself. That's what's compelling for all of us DG enthusiasts when it comes to Jomez and CCDG.
(2) I grew up a baseball lover, both as a fan and a player (was a varsity HS catcher 30 years ago). I now realize this was mostly cultural, not so much an innate love for the game (maybe other than the simple act of pitching and hitting). It's not a game I can play anymore, so that element is gone too.
I'm also older and facing the fact that my free time is finite. Their 162 games are three hours each, give or take. I don't have that kind of time for things I don't love.
Now that the Tigers' organization is a complete disaster from top to bottom, there's no reason for me to pay attention. I would have said even two or three years ago that following them like a scout would might be worth it for me, but I don't believe Chris Illitch gives a damn about the product on the field, and the results of this awful rebuild show it. Avila has bungled the trade flips...and just got a contract extension!
The Lions did that to me for football several years ago. I got sick of ruining a Sunday afternoon, and it made me question the sport itself. I'm pretty much done with it too. I don't care to spend sedentary time watching guys run into each other and forming piles on the ground. It's boring. Thanks, William Clay Ford, for making me see it this way!
What does this all mean in the big picture? I think more people are going to encounter Disc Golf by seeing a couple of throws on Jomez as they're walking by a monitor and will be encouraged to try out the sport. It's going to be an added catalyst to the already healthy, good growth Disc Golf has been experiencing for decades. Very exciting!
I also can see how the traditional sports are going to lose interest over time with the coming younger generations. The cultural aspects are vanishing. The bubble is going to burst for baseball and there won't be the kind of money in it to pay these guys tens of millions per year to chase a ball on a manicured lawn while wearing pajamas for hundreds of hours each season, especially for very crappy franchises. It's not going to disappear in the short term, but I'd be surprised if baseball resembles its 1950's heyday at all in another half a lifetime. Basketball and football probably won't suffer as much. Lots of people love to watch them some blood sport and football provides that...until they change the game so much for safety reasons that it doesn't resemble itself. Again, what's it going to look like in half a lifetime?
