Istanbul Is Now Constantinople

Sure I complain about this stuff because, as I was reminded by a very good friend, we are getting old and crabby. Things aren't the way they used to be. This didn't use to be a strip mall. That's where you used to buy the best donuts in the world. Nowhere is this syndrome more apparent for me than in the context of professional sports. Never mind the fact that when pitchers and catchers report to spring training they will be doing so in a universe that accepts the Chicago Cubs as defending World Series Champions. I just barely became accustomed to the idea of football being played on Sundays in the City of Angels. Now there will be two of these. San Diego will no longer be a destination for visiting NFL franchises. Unless they want to take a day trip to Legoland, of course.
The Los Angeles Rams used to be the St. Louis Rams. Before that they were the Los Angeles Rams. I might try to explain this to my wife, for example, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. She gets the story about Peyton Manning being cast aside by the Indianapolis Colts in favor of a younger quarterback. That's how he came to be the second Denver Broncos quarterback to win a Super Bowl. I don't bother to try and describe how those Indianapolis Colts used to be from Baltimore and how they slipped out of town under cover of night amid all manner of hue and cry from the fan base there. The folks in Baltimore needn't have worried, since they were gifted with a bunch of Ravens for their trouble. This pained the football fanatics in Cleveland because the Ravens used to be Browns and they took all that history and fled to the barely sunnier climes of the East Coast. After a few minutes of gut-wrenching indecision, Clevelanders were given a brand new team that they chose to christen in the least imaginative way possible: The Browns.
But it doesn't stop there. After having held on to its Oilers for decades, Houston was relieved of their team that turned into the Tennessee Titans, missing the obvious opportunity to become the Tennessee Tuxedos, but this is another matter for later discussion. Houston was patient for their requisite seven minutes before they had the Texans bestowed upon them in order that the great state of Texas would not fall behind Ohio in terms of the number of professional football teams calling the Lone Star State home. Sometimes football franchises just spring out of the ether, like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the Seattle Seahawks. This is called expansion. The rest of this is just rambling around the country with great big trucks looking for a community where a group of hard-working young men can set up camp and find their way in this nutty, ever-changing world.
And I want it to stop.