America's Game

It recently occurred to me that we are now nearly halfway through the National Football League playoffs, and while there's definitely something to be said about the post-season excitement, I can't help but be prematurely blue about the whole thing coming to a close.  Yes, the pun was intended and yes, I realize that we still have this year's conference games, Pro Bowl and Super Bowl to look forward to, but my ironically-timed melancholy remains.

Football is such a great game.  It's the only high profile sport that doesn't require its fans to devote countless hours to watching games all week long.  It takes the sting out of winter chill, brings us out of the grey sky doldrums, and lightens the stress and chaos surrounding the holidays.  Best of all, football's season opener coincides directly with that of the school year and, even for fans of ailing teams, week one issues in gratitude for a fresh start and encourages a rare and celebratory hope.  The worst part of football, then, has got to be when it ends.  And not just the fact that it ends, but actually when it ends.  After the Super Bowl, we wake up to a freezing February Monday, praying to everything holy that April will arrive swiftly, because let's face it, spring training is just not interesting enough.  Is it a coincidence that the seemingly endless period of time between the end of football and the start of baseball is also the most difficult stretch of the year in teaching?  I think not.  Perhaps schools give educators and students a week off in February as a way of saying "not gonna lie, the next month and a half is going to be rough. Sorry.  Maybe you should start watching college basketball so you can throw together a really bad bracket for March Madness."

I love football because it can be so emotional, melo-dramatic, and unpredictable week after week.  The experts are so often wrong (at rare times, they are even dead wrong).  The most obvious assumption so frequently get flipped on its head, and then flipped back again over and over.  Elite teams can positively crumble to scrappy, persistent-as-hell little brothers, the season can turn on a dime, and Kansas City can at once be the first team to the lose to the Dolphins and the only team to beat the regular season Pack a handful of weeks later.  No where else does this sort of thing happen in such a short span of time, with all the action packed into the weekends.  There is simply nothing like this game.  And when your team is in the running to pull an upset, deliver on a presumed victory, or anything and everything in between?  Well there really isn't much that can beat that on a cold Sunday afternoon.  Oh, to be a fan.