What 5 Months of Watching Old Games Taught Me About Sports on TV

This past weekend, I watched live team sports from my own country. It’s been a weird few months without them.

While nothing is certain right now, with a Republican leadership still waging an insane war against science, it felt good to watch my Wizards and my Islanders play again. I’d like to include my Nationals in that, but ya know, baseball is stupid, Rob Manfred is an idiot, and they won the World Series last year anyway.

But the return of live sports means that I no longer have to watch reruns of classic games. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. Between the classic games being aired on sports channels and the seemingly endless array of classic games and highlights available on YouTube, the past few months turned into something of a history lesson for me.

I rewatched some games I had forgotten about or simply wanted to relive. Heck, on Sunday morning during the British Grand Prix, I found myself again watching the 2000 Holiday Bowl between Texas and Oregon on ESPNU. That remains one of my favorite bowl games ever. I was able to watch games from the 70’s that I never watched or games from the 80’s that I was too young to remember. Boy, New Year’s Day in the 1980s was something else, wasn’t it?