To say things have changed from when you were a kid growing up is a gross understatement.
But it’s fun to think about the radical difference from then to now, especially concerning the sports world which was the only world I really cared about.
Two such changes hit me over the past weekend.
One, was the fact that once upon a time baseball was the national pastime. All the other sports were just fillers until spring training came around.
Over last Saturday and Sunday, I witnessed again, what I had known for quite awhile, that the NFL was king.
No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
I also realized that the days were over, sadly, when a sports publication I waited almost breathlessly for every Thursday, was a thing of the past.
First things first. The NFL divisional playoffs.
Not all the games were nail-biters.
But the final game on Sunday captured why the sport has such a gripping choke-hold on the American audience.
The Bills hosted the Chiefs in the frigid climes of Buffalo.
It was a scene that defined pro football.
Cold weather and wind in a jam-packed stadium with howling fans dressed in Bills blue and red, screaming their lungs out, trying to will the Bills to the AFC Championship game coming up.
A game featuring two of the very best quarterbacks in the game today, KC’s Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen of the Bills.
These two teams are no strangers to each other, having squared off in recent years for the right to move on in the playoffs. It might have been the Bills best chance, playing the Chiefs at home. Kansas City had not played a single road game during their post-season dominance lately.
Back and forth the two teams battled. It seemed neither squad had the ability to stop the other.
In a tight game throughout, the Bills never trailed, until the Chiefs scored a touchdown less than five minutes into the second half. Buffalo answered with a score of their own to lead once again by four.
Then the Chiefs appeared to clamp down on defense, while they were able to run the ball which is always the key down the stretch in a wintry atmosphere.
A KC TD put them up by three.
Then some crazy developments, an extremely risky fourth gamble by the Bills and a costly Chiefs fumble out of the end zone, ultimately set up a field goal try by Buffalo to seek to tie the game.
But Tyler Bass missed the attempt, wide right, to not only end Buffalo’s chances, but bring back the nightmare of a missed wide right field goal attempt by Scott Norwood 33 years ago, giving the Giants the win over the Bills in the Super Bowl.
Watching the game in the warmth of home, you could feel the intensity of the showdown between these two superior teams. The weather conditions and the reaction of the players, coaches and fans were compelling.
The game was a classic.
Two of the three other Divisional matchups had their moments but not to the degree of the Chiefs and Bills.
The Baltimore Ravens, the top-seeded team in the AFC playoffs dominated the upstart Houston Texans, who go out with a remarkable turnaround season.
It has been a long, long drought for the Detroit Lions, but they held off the dangerous Tampa Bay Bucs and QB Baker Mayfield to advance to the NFC Championship game.
The scene in Detroit with all the victory-starved fans going wild was not far behind the pictures out of Buffalo.
The 49ers, who have rarely comeback after trailing going into the final day quarter, took over and beat the pesky Packers. Green Bay’s young quarterback Jordan Love threw a costly interception, but he’ll be heard from, for sure, and the Packers had a big comeback year.
So now, the two title battles to be played Sunday will determine the Super Bowl matchup.
Any one of the four conference finalists can win and it wouldn’t be a surprise.
The 49ers big question mark is the condition of Deebo Samuel, the jack-of-all trades offensive threat who was forced out of the divisional game with a shoulder injury.
During the season, Samuel was sidelined with the same injury and the 49ers went 0-3 in his absence.
If Samuel is sidelined, the Lions have an edge, in my view.
I believe Deebo Samuel will suit up and play in this crucial game, but the Lions, with quarterback Jared Goff playing at a sky-high level just might win whether Deebo plays or not.
Head coach Dan Campbell will have his crew ready, but the 49ers weren’t the best in the NFC for no reason.
The story is same in the AFC.
No one would shocked by any result between Kansas City and Baltimore.
The Ravens earned their #1 standing on the wings of Lamar Jackson, their multi-talented quarterback who had is headed for Most Valuable Player honors.
When Jackson is on, meaning controlling the game with his legs as well as his passing ability, the Ravens are practically unbeatable.
But on those off-days, which he has been known to have, Baltimore can definitely lose.
My question for Kansas City is this: as good a they are, can the Chiefs handle playing two uber-intense road games in back-to-back weeks against the best in their conference?
I’m not sure they can.
As a youngster anxious to read about anything sports, I became enamored with the first weekly sports magazine.
I thirsted for stories and features about the games and the people who played the games I followed.
Even some I didn’t.
In 1954, Sports Illustrated was born.
It was published by Time Magazine, and it was the first devoted solely to the one aspect of life that mattered to me the most.
The first issue came out in August of that year and its cover that has stuck with me to this day.
It was a brilliant picture of County Stadium in Milwaukee, looking at the first base side of the ballpark.
You could see the upper and lower deck of a night game between the Milwaukee Braves and my beloved New York Giants. Braves power-hitting third baseman Eddie Matthews was at the plate, and the Giants catcher was Wes Westrum. I didn’t know who the umpire was, but later learned that it was a fellow named Augie Donatelli.
Each issue featured stories by most of the very best sportswriters of our time.
Since it was a weekly publication, unlike newspapers who covered games on a daily basis, it put the events of the previous week in perspective.
It also previewed major events in all sports, including tennis and golf, skiing, and the winter sports, as well as the summer sports such as swimming, which broadened by spectrum and great deal.
As indicated by the title of the magazine, the photographs were classic and memorable. Taken by the very best of that profession.
Recently Sports Illustrated laid off 100 workers, and what was at one time the mainstay of sports journalism, has been reduced to rubble.
Look, I realize web-based publishing and the internet has taken over what was once something you subscribed to, or bought at a newsstand to read and absorb.
But, just as baseball, which was supreme as our national pastime, the days of anxiously awaiting the next Thursday to read Sports Illustrated, are in the distant past.