The Internet Is Full of Buyable Commodities
The news that Yahoo(!) Sports has bought Rivals.com for $100M is further proof: anyone with a website -- about anything from scouting prep football players to the Rottweiller's susceptibility for hip displacia -- can sell it for a lot of money.
In retrospect, we shouldn't be surprised. Websites are being bought on a daily basis, and football is at a premium in America right now. All of the television shows (follow the excitement as the NFL releases its schedule!), fantasy games, inches of bandwidth (is bandwidth measured in inches?), and water-cooler attention devoted to the NFL hasn't satiated our thirst for football. So we go younger.
But neither do the countless polls, marathon Saturday sessions, and neverending cadre of oddly-named bowl games. So we go younger yet again.
Now we're fascinated by kids still feeling the acne-ous after-effects of puberty and how they might possibly project to college. The main thing I got out of Friday Night Lights (the book, not the movie or TV show) is mainly that the prep-football obsessed communities in Texas and the midwest are insane. But as I've gained a valuable perspective of high school football in New Jersey I've come to realize that it's everywhere. We're losing our minds on football.
Keep in mind, I'm including myself. I love watching two good high school teams play under the bright whites on a Friday night. I love the packed crowds, the bands, the knowledge that there will be some fierce underage drinking after the game on both sides. And I'm not passing judgements. I'm just saying....we're obsessed. It used to be little league, America's pasttime, all that crap. Now it's pigskin to a much greater extent.
What does it all mean?
