The NFL Starts Today!!!

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One of the greatest things about the fall is football season. We love watching football. There's nothing like the build-up to pro & college football. I used to love the crisp evening air -- before I moved to Fresno, that is. It was the signal that it's football time!

No other sport can compare in our minds.

The baseball season always starts in the shadow of the NCAA Final Four. Plus, major league baseball lasts like 10 months of the year. Why get in a rush about a season that never ends? Especially when your team likely has a budget 1/10 the size of the Yankees or Red Sox. Why even bother getting your hopes up?

And basketball doesn't really get interesting until January. Plus, the football season is still in full swing when basketball tips off. It can wait.

But not football. By now I could care less about the baseball season. Tell me when the World Series starts so I can decide if I want to watch a game or two. Football is now here!

I love the preseason predictions from ESPN's Bill Simmons. Haven't laughed that hard for a while. Here's one of his predictions for the upcoming NFL season:

Prediction VI: Blackouts of home games will become the signature media story of the 2009 season. You'll hear way too much about it. Here's my take: This isn't about the economy. It's about the fact that it's more fun to stay home and watch football than it is to sit in crappy seats to watch any team ranging from "lousy" to "mediocre." It just is. For many fan bases, here are the two choices every Sunday:

Door No. 1 (more expensive): Traffic, parking, long walk to stadium, lousy seats, lifeless state-of-the-art arena, TV timeouts, dead crowds, drunk/bitter fans, more TV timeouts, hiked-up concession prices, PDAs with jammed signals as you're searching for scores, even more TV timeouts, long walk to car, even more traffic.

Door No. 2 (less expensive): Sofa, NFL package, HD, fantasy scores online, remote control toggling, gambling, access to scores, seven straight hours of football, cell phone calls, beer and food in fridge, no traffic.

I can see going through Door No. 1 once a year just to remind yourself that going to an NFL game sucks. But eight times a year? Unless you had good seats, or unless this was your only excuse to get out of your house and get plastered, why would you? It's a blue-collar sport with white-collar ticket prices. This blackout trend would have happened whether the economy was suffering or not.

So, I just have one last thing to say: Go Steelers!

Comments

Barbara said…
Of course, having the Monday night game start at 5:30 will be interesting now that you're in California. Go Steelers!
September 10, 2009 at 5:26 PM
Anonymous said…
Hold on to them. The school has a Robotics club that the boy's may want to join. They may come in handy.
September 14, 2009 at 7:34 PM
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