I live by many mantras, chief among them is that any football is better than no football. Unless the Jets are playing, but that goes without saying. But as far as competitive football goes, college and pro, if it’s on TV I’m watching it.
Whether it’s “have a party” worthy or “plan your day around it” exciting or “watch it out of the corner of your eye while doing menial chores” watchable, I’m in. Because it’s football! This is what we do in America. Football is the most bankable form of entertainment we have. We love football so much it’s like a relative, the kind we like and don’t avoid conversation with at holidays.
The NFL is so aware of this they market the league with the tagline, “Football is family”. And with everything going on in this world right now the fact that there is professional football of any kind is miraculous. We should be grateful for every play, every game and all the effort put in to making the 2020 NFL season possible.
After all, any football > no football no matter what, right?
So why then, knowing the headaches and hassles people from front office to football field are going through this fall, do I have such a love/hate relationship with this season? One minute I’m as passionate and engrossed as ever, cheering so wildly I get banished to the basement at home to watch by myself (and I can’t watch home games in the media section of an empty Gillette Stadium because even my slightest cheer would sound like a frenzied end zone of face-painted fanatics). The next minute I find myself sifting through the comment section of a COVID-19 update, lost in a void of exhaustion and ambivalence toward something I’ve dedicated so much of my personal and professional fortunes to. It’s a new normal I’m not prepared for, but trying to understand [Belichick voice] day by day, hour by hour.
Sure, this sentiment will draw immediate criticism, “Suck it up, Buttercup!” With whatever feelings I have left I can handle it. But if we can’t be honest from a socially acceptable distance, since we can’t actually be next to each other without practically wearing spacesuits, then what’s the point? I don’t believe I’m on an island here, either. Trying to understand where this fanatical bipolarity comes from could be as simple, or complicated, as trying to navigate the murky swirling seas of a pandemic that’s altered every landscape of our lives.
People usually seek entertainment like pro football as relief, a diversion from the menial drudgery of our day-to-day lives. Job’s a grind? Kids are acting up? World’s going mad? Don’t worry, there’s always football! Football doesn’t judge you! Football isn’t concerned with how your day went! Football and all it’s accompanying comforts and pleasures are there for you no matter who you are, what you do or how much your in-laws disapprove of you. Decadent food, adult beverages, gambling...whatever you need when it’s time to step away from reality, football’s got it for you in abundance, like a well-stocked big box superstore of vice and excess. Life sucks? Don’t worry, you’ve got football.
Except now football’s problems are just like your problems. During the COVID-19 crisis you’ve had to make concessions and sacrifices like you can’t remember. So has football. Everyone has to be a makeshift epidemiologist, working from their home which also doubles as a school/gym/barbershop/saloon/place of worship/etc. Trying to stay healthy, and employed, while taking care of those around you is exhausting. With recreational limitations and preventative protocols in place all over one day seems eerily like the next at times. But whereas before it was, “Check your issues at the gate, friend! It’s time for football!”, now it’s “Yeah, football is dealing with the same pandemic and it’s affecting it significantly and it sucks for everyone.”
Football wasn’t supposed to reflect our lives. Football told us not to look in the mirror, but rather at the screen, or in the mini-fridge or at the fantasy waiver wire! But this is the year that DGAF. And football, unfortunately, has seen the coronavirus seep into every facet of it’s existence. So instead of pure escapism that allowed us to enter a temporary emotional bubble every Sunday, plus some Monday and Thursday evenings, now football is trying to figure out if it can survive for a season without a league-wide bubble. Thanks, 2020.
This should go without saying, but then again we have a team literally nicknamed Football Team so no disclaimer is a waste of time, but of course I understand players are real people, with real problems and real lives. I want every one of them to be as happy and healthy playing the game as we are watching them. Admiration for football players, compensation aside, should be at an all-time high. We don’t need the injury of a Dak Prescott to remind us of the dangers players face any given play. But now we have players, especially with the local team, expressing concern over potentially unsafe working conditions.
It’s one thing for a sprained MCL to alter a player’s availability. But now which plane they took to a rescheduled primetime game might affect their availability for the next week’s game, which will just get rescheduled ultimately for a bye week, which will then frustrate the visiting team who practiced all week and now lost their bye week, and oh, if you’re keeping score at home seven other games have to be rescheduled due to this single game adjustment. And then there’s all the media chiding of the league’s handling of the schedule, and the hand-wringing from fans that fills every inch of available social media. And the pregame shows with expert updates, and ...
ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?
Further outbreaks seem inevitable, with scheduling alterations to come. OK, we’ll take that in stride as part of the new NFL normal [drink?] as we hope a full season, with no health complications, ensues. But then you get to matters like the absence of fans and a new wave of disenchantment hits the field like a late penalty flag for holding that negates a touchdown. Some cities are allowing 20 percent capacity. Chiefs games have 16,000 fans. Florida has given the OK for packed stadiums! College football offered half full stadiums this past weekend, and I stared at SEC and Big 12 games with equal awe and shock.
Now I’m concerned for their safety while also suffering from FOMOOF (Fear Of Missing Out On Football)! Tailgates, considered the last great neighborhood of America, are largely off-limits. It’s just cruel that we can’t come together to celebrate something that unites us and helps us look past our divisions and differences. Or that seeing some people get to do so, masked up or not, creates envy or admonition. The surreality of epic games being played in empty stadiums has gone from jaw-dropping to disheartening. You might see this catch and run TD and think, “That guy has gamebreaking speed!”, while some see it and think, “Great play. Would have been cool if fans could have been there.”
We laugh when we see Jon Gruden wear what looks like lingerie on the sidelines, but now coaches can get penalty flags for illegal mask wearing? What are we doing? And the broadcasts? I’m already numb to the synthesized crowd murmur and emotional audio cues generated during broadcasts. I’m as over the computer generated fan sounds as I am Zoom happy hours. The networks are doing their best to simulate familiar football feelings, but after a while it sounds like cardboard fans at baseball games look; silly. NBC took out the artificial crowd sound Sunday during Vikings @ Seahawks for a while, which was cool for a play to get the real feel, but then it seemed like we were watching practice. Just feel the electricity of one of the biggest plays of the year!
Maybe writing this to get fired up about something out of all of our hands is therapeutic. Trust me, with the way 2020 has tossed us around like a sneaker in an empty dryer I’m in full-blown appreciation mode every healthy day I get. I’m grateful for the game I love, and especially the local team, as much now if not more than ever. These Patriots are a blast to watch, shockingly entertaining and competitive given their offseason talent exodus. Cam Newton deserves a packed house to cheer his first downs and touchdown runs. Instead of 68,000 people losing their minds when he strikes a Superman pose we’re waiting to hear if he’s had back-to-back negative tests so he practice again. And play a big game in an empty stadium. Hooray! And what a bummer.
The mantra still applies, any football > no football. But I’m hardly asymptomatic when it comes to loving and hating this season.
