I've given up on the NFL.
I swear something's rigged there. Have you noticed how the evening games like Monday Night Football are always so close and exciting these days? And how they ALL have some bizarre-bad officiating here and there...just enough to keep the underdog from getting spread across the gridiron like butter on hot bread no matter how crappy a team the underdog is?
It wasn't like that back in the day, was it? There were boring Monday Night games on occasion because there were true dynasties back then; teams that utterly and completely annihilated everyone except for, perhaps, one or two arch rivals. That was before Bocephus started singing and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were the most under-dressed of all the NFL cheer squads.
I blame them, don't you? Bocephus and the half-naked cheerleaders? That's got to be it. It can't possibly be that folks in the NFL have to keep their sponsors happy, so they (and the officials?) work really hard to keep folks from going to bed at a reasonable hour when mis-matched nighttime game is played. Riiii-iiiight? Riiiii-iiii-ght. Has to be Bocephus and the cheerleaders.
And the Cowboys have been so blasted frustrating these past few years with all that talent and such lame coaching.
I'm positive they are responsible for each and every one of my gray
hairs. I should seriously sue Jerry Jones. I can so prove gray hairs
are debilitating.
My how things have changed! (Yes. I know the NFL plays on Sundays. And Mondays. And Thursdays. And the occasional Saturday. I also know today is Friday, which has nothing to do with the NFL. I get that.)
College ball is still fun to watch.
Hook 'em, Horns! I guess.
But I seriously have no time to sit and watch football all day long like that anymore. It used to be tons of fun, though. I'd stock up on snacks on Friday, maybe a little adult-style beverage if I felt like it. If it was cold out, I'd turn on the fireplace and get a throw, sprawl out on the couch and only get up for bathroom breaks or to pay the pizza dude.
I once trained a pizza guy to let himself in, pick up the cash and leave the box on the counter if nobody answered the door on a football weekend. He once let the dog out by accident and it took us 30 minutes to get him back. And then we had to go find the dog.! A lot of football happens in that amount of time, letmetellyouthatrightnow!
(Yes. I know college ball and Friday isn't exactly a matching pair. I'm getting there.)
Then there's high school and pee-wee ball.
So, I have a daughter in the high school color guard (You know, flags on the field at half time while the band marches? Whatever.) and a boy in his final year of pee-wee ball. (All 167 pounds of him!) And you know, that's about all the pig skin I can handle these days.
Looking at those athletic NFL and college butts in those tight football pants just doesn't hold the appeal it once did. And I'm sort of afraid I'm going to jump off the sofa during a really exciting play and pull something that is better off not pulled. If I'm really calm and under control, I find I still get excited enough to jiggle stuff that's not supposed to be jiggling under any circumstances, so it's better if I just ....don't.
These days I content myself instead to gaze vapidly at the jumbo-tron in the end zone of my daughter's school's stadium and hope we can leave after we watch her perform at half time so we can beat the traffic. (People, this is Texas. Where after-game traffic makes rush hour look like the Autobahn!) At away games (Tonight, which is FRIDAY, we have an away game.), it's sort of fun to listen to the ending of the game on the radio as we traverse dark, winding, country roads across two or three counties to get home. The hard part is staying awake on a FRIDAY (hello!) night while we wait for the busses to return her to the school so we can go pick her up at...oh, midnight or 1:00AM.
Then we get to jump up bright and early the next morning (after jumping up bright and early all stinkin', dadgummed week long) to get the boy ready for his game. That would be tomorrow morning. And drive across two or three counties on winding country roads while wishing we'd thought to bring java-filled travel mugs with us and long for spring-time sleep-ins. Or at least a pee-wee team that didn't get slaughtered every week.
But...
I have a question: Why do they call it bright and early when it's dark outside. I mean, I get
the early part, but the bright part makes as much sense to me as the NFL anymore. No need to answer, really. It's not worth the calories you'd burn typing an answer to that one.
What I really want to know is when, exactly, is football season over? Can I root for my kids' teams to win while still hoping we don't have to go too deeply into the playoff hassles? Or is that a bad-mom thing to do? Like, please, Lord; if we're not going to go all the way and win state, do we really have to win regionals? Can we stop at some point before that so I can get some Christmas shopping done this year?
Sometimes it's tough to know who to root for. The heck with football! I'll just root for my kids. They're the stars of my team!
So! College or Pro? And which team do YOU pull for each weekend?
And thank you to my top EC Droppers for September!
