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I wouldn’t write this blog entry during basketball season, I don’t really care about basketball. \u00a0I wouldn’t write this entry during baseball season, I wouldn’t watch the World Series \u00a0if I could see it off my back deck!! Football is different story, this is my season, this is the time of year, sports wise, I live for!!! \u00a0This year a couple of things have started to spoil it for me and it has me thinking about the whole sports thing.<\/p>\n
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Let me start with a quick story. \u00a0A number of years ago, when I was a died in the wool UK basketball fan, and bled Blue, the Cats were in the National Championship game and had it won!! \u00a0In the last couple of seconds Duke’s Christitan Laettner hit a long 3 pointer to steal the victory. \u00a0I calmly got up and walked through the kitchen and picked up a empty 5 Gallon water container from our water dispenser, went out to the drive way and smashed it into the concrete over and over until it shatter into a thousand pieces. \u00a0When I returned to \u00a0the house Sherelene said, \u00a0in a sarcastic tone, “I hope you feel better! ” \u00a0I shot something back about leaving me alone, when she asked me a life altering question! \u00a0She said, \u00a0“who won the National Championship three years ago?”, I said, “I don’t know, what’s your point!!”, and not too kindly! \u00a0She said, “I was just wondering why it meant so much if you don’t know who won it only three years ago.”<\/p>\n
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She was right, what difference does it really make? \u00a0Under a lot of conviction, I made a commitment to not get invested with any team to the degree that their loosing would ruin my day, or steal my witness. I couldn’t really imagine Jesus smashing a water jug in my driveway if His team lost!! \u00a0I love to see a good game and I may be for one team, but I rarely get upset regardless of the outcome. Sports should be something we enjoy and learn from, not something that wrecks our day.<\/p>\n
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I still struggle every fall when my alma mater, (UK), \u00a0stumbles around the field looking like it’s the first time they’ve ever seen a football, but I’ve even gotten use to that, \u00a0and just switch to another game and enjoy that one! \u00a0I now enjoy following several teams.<\/p>\n
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I said two things have bothered me this year. \u00a0One is the number of un-sportsman like late hits and deliberate attempts to hurt another player. \u00a0For me football is rough, and I like it that way, but that kind of thing has no place in the game. \u00a0The second is the conduct of some NFL players during the National Anthem. \u00a0What is even worse is the League’s not addressing it. \u00a0I think at a minimum, those players that choose not to stand for the National Anthem should be asked to kneel in the dressing room and then come out to play and collect their millions of dollars!!! \u00a0The whole thing make me sick and to be honest I am less interested \u00a0in the NFL season than usual, just because of that! \u00a0I think all lives matter and we have a lot of problems in America to solve, but turning your back on the nation, it’s anthem and those that serve us, is not part of the solution!<\/p>\n
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I played high school football and my coach taught us how to win like a gentleman, and how to loose like a gentlemen, and take away valuable life lessons. \u00a0He taught us to appreciate at the efforts of our opponent, and how to be able to genuinely \u00a0shake their hand at the end of the game, win or loose. \u00a0 I wish we could go back to that simple time, when we considered other above ourselves.<\/p>\n
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Blessings,<\/p>\n
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the pilgrim<\/p>\n
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P.S. …..and just for the record I am not one of those calling for Coach Stoops to loose his job, I actually like the guy, and feel bad for him. \u00a0Sadly I’ m afraid that even a risen Bear Bryant couldn’t bring football glory back to Kentucky! \u00a0The SEC is just too competitive and there’s just not enough superior talent to go around. \u00a0Our kids play hard, but they are in an up hill battle against the other programs in the SEC that get a larger percentage of the top talent. \u00a0As evidenced in this early season lots of so called lesser schools have great programs and compete head to head with the big boys! Take a deep breath and enjoy it for what is is, a game!!!!!!!<\/p>\n
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I wouldn’t write this blog entry during basketball season, I don’t really care about basketball. \u00a0I wouldn’t write this entry during baseball season, I wouldn’t watch the World Series \u00a0if I could see it off my back deck!! Football is different story, this is my season, this is the time of year, sports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18145"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18157,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18145\/revisions\/18157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}