With dire warnings about the fate of the environment coming at an ever-increasing clip, it’s a good time for sports fans to start trying to go green. While changing your sports-watching behavior may not sound like the easiest way to help the environment, it’s surprisingly simple.
Just follow these simple tips, and Mother Earth will thank you.
Tip #1 — Reduce your paper consumption
In order to save paper, you should stop buying newspapers just to read the sports section. Okay, off to a good start!
Tip #2— Protect animals
Your “D-(fence)” sign is a cruel reminder of years of fenced-in oppression for our animal brothers. May we suggest you switch to a chant of “Free range! Free range!” This change will be most appropriate for fans of Big 12 football.
Tip #3 — Go organic
Convert to organic tailgates. This will help the environment on two fronts: first, you’ll put fewer pesticides into our water, and second, people will stop driving to attend your tailgates.
Tip #4 — Recycle
Remember: just because something is by all indications worthless doesn’t mean you can’t keep recycling it. Just look at Josh McCown’s career!
Tip #5 — Don’t change, adjust
Don’t think that going green means you have to lose all of your beloved traditions. For example, you can still burn couches to celebrate a big win. Just switch from gasoline to biodiesel when you select your accelerant.
Tip #6 — Focus your efforts
Similarly, should you decide to flip over cars as part of your revelry, always target gas-guzzling SUVs. That way if the cops catch you, you weren’t just rioting, you were making a social statement. Go to jail, become a martyr!
Tip #7 — Listen to Al Gore
Take Al Gore with you to games. This one doesn’t really have anything to do with the environment; he just makes awesome jokes about the on-field action and knows a lot about the intricacies of the Cover-2. True story.
Tip #8— Use the power of words
If it snows during a game, laugh and say, “I guess global warming’s not real!” Remember, phrasing a statement in the form of a hackneyed, unfunny joke makes it true.
Tip #9 — Eat local
Never forget the importance of eating local. When you’re at a game, refuse to eat nachos whose cheese wasn’t produced in a petrochemical plant located within a 50-mile radius of the stadium.
Tip #10 — Stay informed
Keep yourself better informed about the earth’s loss of biodiversity by starting a fantasy league that guesses the next animal to go extinct. Polar bears, you’re like Mike Trout and Le’Veon Bell rolled into one doomed species!
Tip #11 — Reduce waste
Switch your Super Bowl squares pool from wasteful posterboard to an earth-friendlier whiteboard. (Or at least say that’s why you’re doing it. The real benefit is that this switch makes cheating much, much easier. Also, the marker sniffing.)
Tip #12 — Know your place
If you were one of the early adopters of more casual, greener sports, don’t smugly ask us what we think of your hacky sack and disc golf now. The answer: they’re still lame.
Tip #13 — Be an activist
Encourage your favorite MLB club to switch to an organic farm system. Don’t tell us that a sack of pesticide-free oats wouldn’t be an upgrade over the Phillies current options.
Tip #14 — Limit emissions
Methane is one of the gases that may accelerate global warming. Time to rethink that game-day pot of chili.
Tip #15 — Use alternative energy sources
For instance: the wind generated by Joey Gallo’s whiffs alone can generate enough electricity to power all of Texas for a month.
Tip #16 — Encourage research
If global warming comes to pass, we’ll need to know how sports can survive under much warmer climatic conditions. This gives us an excuse to do what we’ve always wanted to: put Roger Goodell on a rocket to the sun.
