Might be wrong, but I think LC's departure from BA began before Frank's retirement this summer.
Correct. Along came Covid, and sports stopped, and I stopped following sports. I have been on BA a couple of times in the last two years and posted maybe five times, all in Siberia, all science related posts related to Covid.
When sports started up again, I just ignored it completely. Why? Once upon a time, sports was apolitical. You could find a group of fans, and all support the same team, whether you were a liberal, conservative, libertarian, or socialist. The thing was, you might still talk politics, once in awhile, and disagree, but even then, the sports themselves were apolitical, so you could all agree. Since you had an area of agreement, the political discussions were on the side, and neither consequential nor hostile. You could disagree on politics, and it had no bearing on anything else.
BA, I have to give them great credit in that they have tried to enhance that, over the years, and to keep politics off the boards, sending threads to Siberia when they turned political. They were mostly successful, and the discussions rarely turned personal (unlike everywhere else in America today, sadly), but even here, the political discussions began to turn increasingly hostile in the last few years.
Then, in recent years, the sports themselves started to become political. They no longer were a place where politics could mostly be left behind, or at least not be critical to friendships, because the politics was come from the sport itself. When Covid came along, and I stopped following sports, I realized that I didn't really miss them, nor the political baggage that comes with them. I could find other things where politics simply weren't a part of it. So, I tuned out all sports, at all levels. Sports are fine to play, but not something for me to watch anymore.
Did I leave because Frank retired? To be honest, I didn't even know he had until a few weeks ago I got an email from Monroe saying that Solic had retired, and been replaced by Albin. I was never here "because of Frank", except for my initial visit. I visited the first time because I was curious how things were going for him. I stayed because I liked the people, and I still communicate privately with many of the people from here (just not about sports). I stayed because politics was mostly not allowed in the discussions. I stayed because the fans were literate and the discussions were interesting. The whole thing was at a much, much higher level than the average fan board.
As I said, I still like the people, and I presume the discussions are interesting, but politics has become so endemic, and so polarized, that I do my best to avoid it anywhere and everywhere. It used to be that, as a Libertarian, I could always find things where I agreed with people, but now you never get the chance. If you don't buy the whole liberal spiel, you are a facist, racist, right wing nazi. If you don't buy the whole conservative spiel, you are a libtard, liberty hating socialist. I can go anywhere and be called both those things in a matter of minutes, so I guess I am a facist, racist, right-wing nazi liberty-hating libtard socialist. Frankly, it gets old, and with sports themselves now politicized, sports can not possibly be a place away from politics anymore.
Anyway, hi to everyone and sorry for the long winded explanation.