Summer cannot end fast enough.
No, I am not wishing away this wonderful warm weather, nor do I want to start de-icing my windshield or buy tire chains I have no reason to use anytime soon.
But the fact remains that Football cannot arrive without Fall. Yep, Football, with a capital “f”.
Other than the brief tease that is the Olympics (16 days is not legally recognizable as a season), there will be a putridly (real words won’t do here) low amount of sport over the next 44 days to keep you enthralled and held over until the summer comes to a screeching halt and football season officially launches in the Northwest.
Yes, the Mariners, Sounders, and Timbers (last but not least, PTFC!) all play games between now and then, but do you seriously get as excited for a baseball game or futbol match as you do for a Ducks, Beavers, or Seahawks football game?! I didn’t think so.
There is simply something extra special about football season. Maybe it’s the fact that 90% (I didn’t do any math) of the games are on Saturday and Sunday. Maybe it’s the fact that the inner aggressor in you cannot wait to see more carnage on the gridiron (sorry Roger Goodell, we really do crave it). Maybe you just love football more than all of the other sports.
Is it the pageantry of college football? Or the super-intense rivalries in the NFL? Or is it that you cannot wait to see how a guy (Peyton Manning) looking to be either the next Christopher Reeve, or the next Peyton Manning (Peyton Manning) pans out on a new team and in a new uniform for the first time since January 1998? After FOUR neck surgeries? It’s prime time television that writes itself. And you can’t wait.
I’ll be honest, my workplace fantasy football league is talking about drafting. Yes, already. Yes, in July. Even Andre of FX’s “The League” wouldn’t call that a wise move, and this guy drafted Tiki Barber and Keyshawn Johnson after they had retired to join the media.
I’m already trying to plan where and how I will watch the NFL’s Kickoff Game, airing on September 3rd @ 5:30pm on NBC. It’s the Giants and the Cowboys, and it will be the best game of the 2012 season. Why, because it will be the first! That’s what we’re all waiting for isn’t it?!
The Seahawks kick off their season just four days later against their bitter division rivals, the Arizona Cardinals, in a regional broadcast on Fox @1:15pm. We get to see new uniforms, Matt Flynn at QB (please Pete, no more T-Jax, we’re begging you. He sucked, he sucks, he will suck. Just bench the bastard, and save us!) Marshawn Lynch, and hopefully a much more exciting offense similar to the scheme Matt Hasslebeck ran in his prime. All of this against a division rival on FOX (shameless plug-plug)! What more can you want?
Well how about the defending Rose Bowl Champion Oregon Ducks kicking off their undefeated (too soon?) 2012 campaign with a game against juggernaut (kidding) Arkansas State, in a nationally televised cupcake game on ESPN at 5:30pm on a Saturday night (Sep 1)?
If that’s not enough, the Oregon State Beavers, ready to regain their winning ways (right?) take on Nicholls State earlier in the day, which should be the tune-up/confidence booster they will need to unseat visiting Wisconsin the following week, the same Saturday that Oregon battles WAC power Fresno State, which should be a tremendous offensive shootout.
That same weekend, the very next day in fact, the Seahawks host the Cowboys, hoping to get the Matt Flynn era (we’re begging from the church pew kneeling-cushion now Pete) off to a great 2-0 start, in a 1:15pm FOX regional broadcast.
From there it’s just 15 short weeks until the NFL playoffs, and just 2.5 months before Oregon battles Oregon State for the Platypus Trophy in the Civil War, and ideally, a spot in the second annual Pac-12 Championship game.
And it’s all in CRYSTAL CLEAR HD, where the games are better, the beer (er… beverages) cheaper, and the drives shorter!
All of this while, oh yeah, the annual Fall Classic (World Series Championship of Major League Baseball for you people living under rocks; or the only part of the baseball season that even remotely sparks my interest for those who share a lack of interest in the ridiculously long season) takes place in the beginning of October, and is sadly the only time (to date) of year the Mariners are not playing baseball somewhere. Baseball is the only sport, by the by, whose best player (I won’t name names, but he is perhaps the best 1B/overall player ever), would even dare to think about leaving the team he carried to three world series and two championships for more money, and then proceed to follow through with such a heinous idea. Only in baseball would or could this happen. Nice work Bud Selig. You further ruined Baseball for me, and my heart was still healing from the Oakland A’s going to the World Series in 1987-88, 90 (winning just one by the way), only to be completely destroyed by the departures of Tony LaRussa, Mark McGwire, Dennis Eckersley, and Jose Conseco by 1995. This was by no way your fault (per se) Bud (that’s his name, he’s no friend of mine…), but I have had severe trouble loving baseball ever since, and your regime has done nothing to inspire my heart to shed its icy lining.
David Stern may pull strings to make a previously underachieving (and league owned team) look more marketable by sending their one blue-chip player to Los Angeles’ second string team. After of course vetoing a trade that was less ideal for revenue or marketing (from the view of his own pockets) yet was in favor of Los Angeles’ first string, and the league’s perhaps most popular team of all. Hmmm.
And this is the same owner who is currently watching his NFL team fall apart under the reign of Roger Goodell, who temporarily benched his GM, head coach, interim head coach, defensive captain, and has seemingly turned his star QB in to a money hungry diva. All after this same group of execs, players, and coaches thrived for a team that had previously done nothing since…ever. In a market that was destroyed, both physically and emotionally, by Hurricane Katrina.
But neither of these hacks would ever let their league’s star player walk away from his small-market heartland team (while in full-on dynasty mode), to join a franchise that has long been one of the league’s biggest markets’ third or even fourth best team. In fashion true to his generation, Pujols (oops, I wasn’t naming names. WTH, he’s a money grubbing whore of an athlete. His name is Albert Pujols, and he’s the Brett Favre of baseball.) followed a career year last season by having one of the deepest and most inexplicable slumps he or anyone has ever had. Ever. Perhaps baseball is harder when you’re paid ridiculously high for your poor-beyond-poor efforts (A-Rod anyone? Anyone? Or all sports, Albert Haynesworth?).
Sorry, my train of thought was derailed several times over there. One too many Bill Simmons (shameless plug? Nope) articles will do that to a person.
This is not about commissioners, or their sins (there I go again), this is about the American Football season, and the fact that it starts in just 44 days, and it cannot come soon enough.
Ducks, Beavers, Seahawks, Huskies… hell even the Cougars for you people stuck in no man’s land searching for that “dare to be great” situation. I’ll give you a hint.. it’s not there to be found in Pullman, Wa….
The NBA draft is said and done, and soon we Blazer enthusiasts will be either finished crying over losing Batum, or we will be ready to cry at yet another one of his lackluster seasons. We will be ready to cringe every time Leonard Myers’ name is read outloud backwards, thanks to a bored or dyslexic birth certificate typist. We will cheer for Damian Lillard, or we will watch Kendall Marshall and Harrison Barnes out perform him this season.
But all of that comes long after September, when you are preparing your NBA fantasy team.
For now, the wait for Football is 44 days, and even the Catholics don’t practice a lent period that long.
44 days! Can we make it? With the help of preseason, fantasy drafts, water-cooler fodder, and a 365, 24 hour a day NFL Network (thanks NFL Network), we can.
All I hope is to see Matt Flynn starting for the Seahawks, and dammit, they’re not even the team highest on my NFL radar. Three mentions Pete. That has to mean something. It just has to.
44 days.
Get ready.
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