If you’re a man or a woman who has achieved a certain age, you miss the way sports used to be.

C’mon, don’t be afraid of how this might label you. Embrace your inner dinosaur.

Because I’ve been there. If a nationally televised snippet show was the highlight of your life in the 1980s and remains a centerpiece of it today, you can’t look in my eyes and convince me that you believe Version 2011.0 is better.

You miss it. You know it. If there were an Occupy Athletics, your tent would be encamped next to mine.

You miss when your favorite team or its sworn enemy actually had to acquire a majority of its talent through the draft, rather than using its leverage as a world superpower to trade or bid for it later.

People automatically cheered for the good guy rather than cynically assessing his talent through the kaleidoscope of his professed faith.

Assistant coaches went home and got frisky with their wives.

Local broadcast affiliates were permitted to simulcast such a trifling event as a quarterfinal playoff game involving a team in its home market, rather than a giant conglomerate holding that contest hostage.

Division I-A and Division I-AA were perfectly acceptable class distinctions, with no need for politically correct, alphabet-soup, jargon names that only university presidents can identify.

Six wins weren’t enough to put you in a New Year’s Day game. Or any bowl in Florida. Or any bowl in the Western Hemisphere.

Boxing was on at 4:30, right after bowling, didn’t cost $49.95 and didn’t have to compete with two bald guys in a cage kicking and scratching each other like 9-year-olds on a playground.

The Heisman went to the outstanding player in the country, not the quarterback or running back with the best stats whose team is ranked in the top five.

Army-Navy was given a holiday time slot, not played as an afterthought on Heisman Saturday.

Your World Series champion defended its title with the same manager and same superstar(s) in the heart of its lineup.

The Patriots could play like hot garbage and we didn’t have to hear about it all week long from flagrant bandwagon followers.

Future hall-of-fame basketball players wanted everything under the sun except to be teammates.

You didn’t know the receiver wearing No. 18, but the clue to his identity was as close as that handy numerical roster in TV Guide.

Oh, and he wasn’t wearing No. 18. Teams only had four receivers and they all wore a number in the 80s, because they weren’t pretentious, self-aggrandizing wastes of God-given ability.

Professional athletes’ parents didn’t do interviews or volunteer information in any fashion.

College teams that were caught cheating didn’t get anywhere near a television camera for three years.

Playing the intentional devil’s advocate was an activity confined to the swiveling seats at your local watering hole, not the basis for nine different daily talk shows.

Three hours was enough time to watch any nine-inning, major league baseball game. No exceptions.

Ten pitchers were enough for any staff in said league. Again, no exceptions.

All baseball managers wore a uniform, no matter how ridiculous it looked.

All football coaches were decked out in a trench coat and a necktie, and it never looked ridiculous.

We were all at the mercy of Mr. and Mrs. Butler for high school Heal Points and couldn’t wait until Tuesday morning to get our hot little hands on them. And there weren’t 99 amateur mathematicians trying to beat them to the punch.

There was no two-minute sportsmanship manifesto read before every scholastic sporting event, and amazingly we didn’t kill one another.

Those high school teams legitimately disliked each other and didn’t have to fraternize after the game with out-of-towners who had been their “travel teammates” all summer and fall.

That’s the way we were.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was good. And you’ll never convince me that as a whole it wasn’t better.

— Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].