Phew.That sure was a long seven months.
And while the start of football season isn’t exactly Christmas morning, it’s close.
Not that I’ve been crossing off the days on a Troy Polamalu calendar tacked up next to the bed or anything.
Just kind of keeping track in my head is all.
Now, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that life is utterly devoid of meaning without football. But Sundays just don’t feel quite right without the NFL in your life. There’s simply no substitute for the sort of spiritual renewal one experiences after spending 10 straight hours locked in the house watching football.
They don’t call it the Hail Mary for nothing, you know.
Because football season is a time for hope. It is a time for new beginnings. In many ways, it is like springtime.
Except that it’s fall.
But nevertheless.
And the dawn of a new football season is also, lest we forget, a time when the humiliation of last year’s disastrous fantasy-league showing can be put behind us, and the potential for fantasy immortality can be embraced. There’s nothing like watching a championship season unfold as a masterfully constructed fantasy roster begins hitting on all cylinders.
At least until your starting quarterback breaks his collarbone in Week Two.
At which point it feels an awful lot like a death in the family.
Naturally, we’ve all spent much of the past 203 days futilely attempting to fill the void, desperately trying to fool ourselves into believing there are other things in life worthy of our attention.
The Winter Olympics.
The World Cup.
That whole Hezbollah-Israel situation.
But deep down inside, we knew what really mattered:
Whether Willie Parker can get it done on fourth-and-goal from the 2.
And now it’s time to find out.
That’s the beautiful thing about football season. It’s an unscripted weekly drama that will not be resolved until sometime after New Year’s. And it demands our complete and undivided attention.
Which is why all household projects have been postponed until further notice, incidentally.
Indeed, week after week, for the next five months, football will be there to buoy our spirits through the difficult times that surely lie ahead.
A welcome distraction from the gas bill. A legitimate excuse to cut out of church early.
And you say there are 2 feet of snow headed this way?
Excellent.
Just the way the Steelers like it.
