Scared yet? You should be. If football’s your calm, then August is the storm before it. While fans of the game study for Fantasy drafts, plan their pregame parties, and prep for this season’s slate on the gridiron, hopes and dreams walk a fine line over the next few weeks, and for many it will end … before it even begins.
While training camp offers an opportunity for coaches to work on their systems, players to get into shape, and youngsters to impress, fans will spend the better part of camp’s duration hoping and praying that the key components of their team run this gauntlet without finishing it worse for the wear. Injuries are always part of the game, but it’s the pre-“game” injuries that hurt the most, and everyday offers another opportunity for attrition to rear its head.
As a young man, injuries seem unlikely. As an elder-statesman; inevitable to a point. And as a maturing adult hardened by life’s inequities, a guillotine hanging by a thread, seconds, minutes, or hours from beheading everything you’ve spent the better part of the last 8 months fantasizing about in regards to your team’s upcoming campaign. I watch the ticker with reticence. Scan the sports page in its entirety from the get-go so as to eliminate the possibility of a surprise attack by information of a “season-ender.” And cherry-pick sports radio for conversations containing red-flagged words and terms like ACL, walking boot, crutches, day-to-day, indefinitely, and the Grim Reaper of them all: Dr. James Andrews, whose name has become synonymous with late-night-benders resulting from your team’s primary asset being pretzelized by the fickled-finger-of-fate.
This year’s already off to a banner start. The NFL’s seen a bevy of knee injuries, some of the top-tier college programs have lost game-breakers, and the flash-mob media – who’s always looking for an angle – has convinced us it’s the infantile stages of an epidemic the likes of which we’ve never seen.
Some people love the message boards this time of year. Every night (sometimes every 15 minutes via a refresh button surely not designed for such), fanatics flock to their favorite site like addicts to their fix, jonesing for clues regarding X’s and O’s, upcoming talent, and the guy who’s “taken it to another level” en route to a certain Heisman run. Not me, I can’t get far enough away from those things this time of year. The only thing worse than an informal gathering of predominantly irrational fanatics, is that same informal gathering during a time of little fact, but a whole lot of hearsay about plays no one really saw, and injuries no one’s really talking about. Teams play it close to the vest this time of year and few things lack the level of dependability as a group of irrationals working themselves into a lather over rumors created to do just that.
I’m sorry, but during a time most are celebrating the return of the game they love, I’m forced to ignore it in hopes it won’t let me down. Every year a handful of players both locally, and across this land pique my curiosity and tease my appreciation for “special.” I love watching greatness and look forward to seeing known commodities continue to impress, while anxiously awaiting what this season’s crop of soon-to-be’s have to offer. But, training camp has been known to rob me of that appreciation and occasionally diminish a great player before an opportunity to meet his expectations … and that is what sends me to the hills.
Football’s underway … kinda, and for you I offer congratulations on the soon-to-be-season you’ve waited for since its commencement more than a half year ago. But while you rejoice, I lament the longest month of my fanatical year. It is the eve to our football Christmas, but like Christmas Day before, it’s the longest night prior to our year’s greatest day.
Good luck!
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