It is the middle of the summer right now. Lebron is going to take his talents to South Beach, The World Cup is over and forgotten, Mike Pelfrey used to look like an ace in the Mets rotation and now looks like, well, Mike Pelfrey, and it all just makes me think about one thing: Football. Yes I am one of those people who lauds football above all else in the realm of sport. However I don’t do this because I don’t like the rest of the sports. Football just is that much better.
It has the balls to make you not only watch the Draft, but watch the subsequent three days and care where Jimmy Clausen falls (he’s overrated). Pro Football has succeeded in overtaking Baseball as our pastime because it demands your attention. YOU HAVE ONE DAY TO WATCH IT AND IT’S SUNDAY. Baseball has like 12912 games and none of them matter if you like the Kansas City Royals, but on any given sunday a team can beat another. Football is also TV friendly. Have you seen the pregame shows? A bunch of old football players talking about how much they love football. It’s awesome. And if these pregame shows don’t get any better, they certainly do in their theme songs. The Fox NFL Sunday theme is arguably the best theme to grace any television program since The NBA on NBC (read: the best sounds collected to form a song in the history of music). The NFL on CBS theme isn’t far behind. So taking this all in, I can watch 3 games each sunday and that is the best. Football also knew where the prime television landscape was outside of Sundays too. They were smart enough to take the shittiest day of the week (Monday) and give it one big primetime football game each week. So now instead of hating the hell out of your monday, you can get excited for the last game of the week! NOW YOU CARE ABOUT FOOTBALL TWICE A WEEK!
The last thing that really cemented football in my heart and the heart of all Americans is Fantasy Football. Fantasy Football has emerged as the one true force that football always needed. It has now forced me to not only care about my team, but also every single player in the whole sport. Yes, most sports have fantasy but football is really the only one where people go crazy over it and set up office pools etc. What FanFoot also has done is it enabled girls to understand football. Often, girls excuses for not liking football were that they couldn’t follow the game or understand what was happening. Get them to join a Fan Foot league however, and slowly but surely they can grasp each position and eventually put it all together to become a cohesively intelligent student of the game. Plus they can draft cute players and buy those girl football jerseys that I F-ing love.
Football is in the air and I love it…
P.S. HBO’s HARD KNOCKS starts very soon!
