Reading some cultural tea leaves of late has led me to wonder whether a pillar of American teenage life—high school athletics—will still exist 20 or 30 years from now. With participation levels among high school athletes higher than ever, that may seem like a remote possibility.
But here are some concrete reasons why it might not be so far-fetched:
1. Concussions. An obvious point, but every time we mine new concussion-related data, it seems like what we discover is that the inevitability of concussion-related injuries rises exponentially. In other words, we look for an answer, and that answer is always “It’s worse than we thought.” Within the next two or three years, I think a major media outlet with a lot of clout will craft a feature story arguing that football should be abolished.
Tick-tock. 30 Rock and The Office are close to wrapping for good, and, with them, so is SitCombat. Both seem to be going out in style, as they produced high-quality episodes last week.
Rather than irradiate my readers with my old-fashioned but salient worldview, however, I’ve decided to write about a professional wrestling show.
Seems like just yesterday I was writing SitCombat. It was actually the day before yesterday, thanks to the previously explained 
The Axis of Ego’s second year was a productive one. This is the 105th and final post of the year, which averages out to a hair over two pieces per week. Not a bad clip. As of this writing, the blog has accumulated a little over 31,000 views in 2012, which is good progress. I checked in at about 26,000 last year, and half of that came in a matter of two or three days from 
The last few weeks have provided a veritable cornucopia of off-base commentary and unsophisticated political thought. From David Dow’s call to 
SitCombat: 1/31/13
They face off against the series finale of 30 Rock, and it would be disingenuous to behave as if 30 Rock doesn’t have a natural advantage thanks to (1) sentimentality, (2) being able to pull out all the stops for a series finale, and (3) being an hour-long episode. [EDIT: Apparently, The Office is also pulling double-duty tonight, which means I’ll be up a lot later than usual]
Still, I will be objective as I can in evaluating, as always. If I were a betting man, though, I would say the odds favor a swan-song victory for Tina Fey and company.
Let’s see how it all shakes out.
This was SitCombat for January 31, 2013:
Continue reading →
Share this: