My mother tongue fails utterly and completely to provide me words to describe how tired I am of hearing about Tom Brady’s balls. I don’t care about Brady’s balls, Blount’s balls, or Belichick’s balls. I don’t care about any of the New England Patriot’s alleged soft balls.

I. Don’t. Care.

Unfortunately, I can’t turn on the radio or the television without some talking head giving some exhaustive explanation of whether or not the Patriots had soft balls and if so why and who is responsible for the whole unintentionally-fraught-with puerile-humor debacle now known as “Deflate-gate.”

De-freaking-flate-gate. Really?

For my foreign readers and those who — luckily — are heretofore blissfully unaware of what I’m ranting about, allow me to give a brief precis of this whole tawdry affair. A week ago yesterday, the Indianapolis Colts and New England Patriots played a game of American football to determine which of the two would represent the American Football Conference in the upcoming Earth-rotational-pausing event known as Super Bowl XLIX (that’s 49 for those Roman-numerally challenged among us). During said game, a Colt defender intercepted a pass thrown by Tom “Golden Boy” Brady. The Colt defender pointed out to someone that the ball felt somewhat “flat” or “deflated.” The referees took possession of the dozen balls the Patriots had been using throughout the first half of play and determined — using a gauge, bare hands, or possibly chicken-blood-based voodoo, no one seems to know — that eleven of the balls were, indeed, underinflated by 1 to 1.5 psi less than the rules allow. Apparently, the Patriots were cheating.

Much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth followed.

Because of these flabby balls, I have endured a solid week of accusation and counter-accusation; blame laying and blame deflection; players defended and players used for speed bumps for the team bus. Saturday, I sat through a physics lecture by an NFL head coach. If you are looking for something to compare that to, imagine Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins teaming up for a series of revival services at the local Southern Baptist Church. Awkward, ridiculous, and out-of-field do not provide even a good beginning description of how horrible that interview was.

I realize lots of you have the same question: “If you hated hearing about it so much, why did you bother listening and watching it all?” My very simple answer is I DIDN’T HAVE A FREAKING CHOICE!

This crap has been everywhere for a week. I expect ESPN to discuss something like this ad nauseum because, after all, they are a sports network so it’s kinda their job. I wasn’t even surprised when my local sports radio station opened last Monday morning with this story as lead. I was a little worried when it was STILL the lead story on Friday, but, again, it’s a sports station. However, I AM standing mouth agape at the amount and priority of coverage real life NEWS stations gave and are still giving this insanity. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News have all run more than one sizable story about what is, at its core, ONLY A STUPID SPORTING EVENT!

How about this? Did anyone realize, in the midst of all the ballyhoo about balls, that the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the hand of the Doomsday Clock two minutes ahead so that it now sits at 11:57? That’s three minutes til Armageddon. The symbolic clock hasn’t been set this close to symbolic midnight since 1983 back when Ronnie Ray-gun was Hell-bent on winning the Cold War even if it meant we all went up in a red-white-and-blue mushroom cloud. Instead of reflection on what this says about our fragile world, Americans sat glued to talking head explanations of how a ball should feel in the quarterback’s hand.

What about coverage of the events leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz Death Camp? One would think marking the seventh decade since one of the most horrible dens of atrocity known to man was broken open for the world to see might garner extensive attention. Unfortunately, the poignant ceremonies leading up to the January 27 anniversary have all fallen under the shadow of a giant grey hoodie with the sleeves cut off.

A massive, once-in-a-century type storm is brewing in the northeast, right in the backyard of the “Deflate-gaters.” This storm has crept across the northern USA steadily gaining strength for a week now, but the only cold air people seem to care about is the air in those limp Patriot balls and volume upon volume of hot air is being released in the explanation.

In Syria, the Kurds won a major victory over ISIS militants. In the Ukraine, thirty people died and 130 fell injured by shellfire from Russian separatist militias. President Obama had high level talks with the Indian Prime Minister for the first time in the POTUS’ two terms in office. Ebola killed several more people in West Africa and Boko Haram attacked yet another city in Nigeria. Yet, in America, NONE of these stories garnered a FRACTION of the attention surrounding a dozen undersized balls on an American football field.

Why do we still wonder why the rest of the world thinks we’re idiots? We ignore massively important issues in politics, science, economics, etc, but flock like buzzards to a rotting carcass over an insignificant story surrounding a GAME. We turn our backs on events and movements of supreme importance, but we make sure everyone knows the status of Tom Brady’s balls.

This was a great country once and I think it is still the best on Earth, but our priorities are so out of whack I shudder to think what another few decades will bring.

#declineandfall

Love y’all and keep those feet clean, but PLEASE, in the name of all that’s holy, don’t mention Tom Brady’s balls to me again!