Huby's Halftime: Regionality and Why You Should be Watching Pro Wrestling
Welcome to Huby’s Halftime. Let’s talk about two things I enjoy: college football and pro wrestling.
Lost in the Shuffle
It’s a muggy summer morning and I’m headed out on my morning run. Music in my ears, sweat pouring down my face as I smell the smoke coming from Stamey’s BBQ. This has to be some form of punishment to smell BBQ on a morning run. While contemplating my life decisions the usual face is staring down at me.
While seeing the smiling face of Dabo Swinney is annoying, it is a reminder of what Greensboro has meant to college athletics. The birthplace of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The host of the ACC Basketball tournaments. Well, that is until this summer. Greensboro has been the headquarters of the ACC since 1953 until they decided they were moving the headquarters to Charlotte, NC in July.
With another wave of conference realignment happening, college football as we know it is fading away. Now, when some folks say this, they want to point to the increasing opportunities for student athletes to make money. To be abundantly clear this is not the changes I detest. What saddens me the most is the regionality that is being lost, perhaps the thing that makes college football college football. In a tweet(do we still call them this??) from Bomani Jones, we are no longer building conferences built on regionality, similar school structures and cultures, but rather building the best packages to be sold to TV networks.
Sure, it will be “fun” to see Oregon playing Michigan or Ohio State every year but at what cost? To watch the Ducks fly across the country to face Rutgers and Maryland instead of playing local rivals Oregon State every year. That does not feel like college football to me.
How will the non revenue sports fair? How is this good for women’s basketball or for the swim teams? The NCAA and these conferences have always lied in our faces and claimed that student athletes are at the center of all decisions they are making, but these conference realignment decisions could not be further from the truth. We are only padding the pockets of the suits upstairs while the players on the field will continue to not get a cut.
We are also not that far from a world where the likes of Alabama, Ohio State, and Georgia separate themselves from the likes of Vanderbilt and Rutgers. What is stopping these schools from building super leagues only filled with the 12-16 best teams/biggest brands in college football? The answer is nothing, nothing is going to prevent this from happening. Again, sure this makes for compelling football but at what cost?
So where does this leave places like Greensboro that exist in the future of college athletics? Will college football find itself similar to NASCAR as it left the regionality that made it special for big cities that do not ultimately care as much? Will North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, and NC State all play in different conferences? Will Dabo Swinney still get to smile down on the people of Greensboro like some spiritual deity? Who knows, but what I do know is that we are losing something great.
You Should Be Watching Pro Wrestling
If you are subscribed to this here Substack, one thanks for indulging. Two, it probably means you have some interest in sports and other forms of pop culture. So allow me to put you on game for a minute.
Pro wrestling is the best thing on TV right now. Yes, I know TV shows like Reservation Dogs, Ted Lasso, Righteous Gemstones, Rap Sh!t, are all either here or on their way. Yes, football season is just a mere week away. Hell, the Las Vegas Aces have been dominating the WNBA this season in historic fashion. But none of these have quite been hitting like pro wrestling has this year. Let’s break it down.
Accessibility
With a basic subscription to cable TV, YouTube TV, or other methods (s/o to all my pirating friends) you can watch pro wrestling any day of the week. Between the two largest brands All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) you get four solid nights of wrestling. What is great about pro wrestling is it is not like your favorite HBO drama where you need to be glued to your TV every Sunday night.
The medium works well for those who need to watch at their own pace or skip through parts you do not really enjoy. We all have busy lives. Orient the entertainment into your schedule , not the other way around.
.Family Drama
Some of the greatest TV shows of all time deal with family dynamics. The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Atlanta, and Succession. Family is something, whether positively, negatively, or somewhere in between, is something we all relate to. Stories centered around the family will always be powerful, and pro wrestling is not exempt.
In what is arguably the most captivating story on TV right now, “The Bloodline Saga” on WWE between actual familial blood cousins Jey and Jimmy Uso, Solo Sikoa, and the tribal chief himself, Roman Reigns. An authentically Samoan story full of betrayal, loyalty to family traditions, and of course an Undisputed WWE Championship belt, this story works off of the same tropes and pacing pieces that makes a show like Breaking Bad captivating, or why people continue to spend money on Fast and Furious movies, we all care about family. In whatever way that word is defined for us.
But the family stories do not just stop there. There is of course nepotism with folks like Cody Rhodes(son of wrestling legend Dusty Rhodes) and Charlotte Flair (daughter of wrestling legend Rick Flair). You have the constant feuds between Dominick Mysterio and Rey Mysterio or you have dope moments in AEW where commentator Taz gets to call matches for his son Hook.
Come watch pro wrestling, it’s a family business.
Friendship
Friends. How many of us have them? That does not really matter because pro wrestling is here to show you the totality of friendship, from the moments of pure elation and bonding to the backstabbing betrayal that you cannot wait to talk to your therapist about. The highlight of this is currently being in AEW with Adam Cole and AEW World Champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman(MJF). Two radically different personalities put together randomly in a tag team match but have built a friendship that gets the crowd to pop every week.We sit and enjoy the formation of the friendship but we also eagerly wait for one of the members to turn on their partner. Will it be MJF, maybe the greatest heel (villain) in pro wrestling right now, or will it be the crowd darling Adam Cole who wants his shot at the championship belt? Compelling entertainment right? Why would you not want to watch this?
There is something for everybody
Wrestling has an extremely troubled history when it comes to inclusion along the lines of race, gender, and sexual identity. While there is still quite a bit of ways to go (can we book better women’s matches and stories) there have been some improvements. Which connects to an earlier point, making pro wrestling more accessible than in years past. Women’s matches are legit and not some patronizing and sexist idea of what women wrestling would be like.
Our wrestlers of color are not subjected to racist stereotypes and bad storytelling. Characters are fully fleshed out with complexity and originality that makes them even more compelling.
.
There is even a range of body shapes and types that are getting a heavy push from their respected companies. If pro wrestling can work to build a more inclusive world, why can’t you?
*As we apporoach the fall and the football season. Let me know what type of content you would like to see here. Feel free to comment or shoot me a personalized message.
Also I’m very sad at the forming of mega conferences in CFB. I can already see the disparity of teams growing even wider to the point we’ll see schools, even the larger state ones let alone the smaller programs, be lost to oblivion.
Most of the best rivalries in the sport are attributed to regionality, and even though they’re out of conference or has become very one sided, they’re still a joy to watch. My grandad went to Georgia Tech and to this day will still go on rants about Georgia. These things matter, but are yet another sacrifice on the altar of “progress” and capitalism.
Pro wrestling is the main reason we have modern combat sports today, because even though their fight was horrible, Antonio Inoki and Muhammad Ali’s dream fight helped spark an idea for martial artists of different backgrounds to test their skills against one another.
It also is the reason that many homes picked up television sets, because the entire country wanted to see Gorgeous George get his ass kicked (coincidentally the same man who told the previously mentioned Ali to never stop running his mouth in order to sell more tickets and create a persona for himself).
There’s a lot of wrestling’s history that is cringy and out of touch to downright awful and problematic, but wrestling is for everyone and is a completely unique form of media that everyone should experience.