With sports on TV, there was at least some measure of control, some restriction on your access. That's why days like March Madness, New Year's Day and the first days of the baseball playoffs were so exhilarating: You could lose yourself in sports for 12 hours at a stretch.
But now, you can do that every freaking day>!
The only restrictions are your Internet connection and your wallet. But connections get faster every year, and we're not far from the days where you'll be able to purchase every individual game just before tipoff/first pitch/kickoff, iTunes-style. So farewell, boring board meeting/kids' birthday/funeral; hello, Braves/Phillies or Lakers/Heat!
One sidelight: Skipping TV meant that I also skipped hours and hours of pregame shows, postgame shows, in-game wrap-ups, sideline interviews, yapping screamfests and highlights, and I've got to be honest … I didn't miss those a bit. The Internet is tailor-made for quickie clips of out-of-work coaches pontificating on how the Steelers don't have the secondary to contain Aaron Rodgers, and anyone who thinks so is a heretic and a fool. But you know what? The Internet also makes it easy to skip right past that blathering, too. If all you want is the game and nothing but the game -- plus some trenchant analysis right here on Yahoo! Sports and ThePostGame.com, of course – take to the Web, friends.
Sports, by its immediate nature, stands apart from typical TV fare. You can store up a season's worth of “Dexter” episodes to watch all at once, but you can't exactly package up 162 Cubs games for later viewing. (Though someone surely has.) For one thing, that's a lot of baseball to comb through at once, and for another, chances are you'll know how it all plays out well before actually watching the games. (Spoiler: The Cubs lose.)
So, yeah, the live nature of TV binds us all together even in this era of hyper-fractured media. And there's something comforting in that. The days of everyone gathering around radios or televisions to tune into a single game are long gone. But the Internet yokes us together in million-member communities, where Auburn fans or Red Wings fans or Cowboys fans can virtually hang and share ecstasy and misery, secure in the faith that they're the absolute best fans in the land. And if they're all watching the same game at the same time all over the planet, who's to say they're not?
The No TV Diet Recap:
-- Day One: NFL, Golf.
-- Day Two: NHL, NASCAR.
-- Day Three: MLB, Tennis.
-- Day Four: NBA, NCAA.
