NFLization of America

It would be too easy to use this blogging time to discuss my boy Greg Paulus and his sudden interest in becoming the Michigan quarterback. To turn down Coach K's offer of a seat on hi bench is akin to me telling the manager at Chick Fil A that I just want a salad today. It ain't a good idea and you just don't do it. Instead I want to address a far more pressing issue for sports fans around the country.


With the NFL draft rapidly approaching I want to discuss a threat so dire that mainstream media outlets dare not touch it for fear they will run afoul of the NFL's conduct policy and that's the NFLization of America. Believe it or not I coined that phrase.

To illustrate this point I take you back a few years when a friend of my friend made an offhand comment that just ruined my week a few years back. My beloved Phillies were in the midst of yet another 90 plus loss season and he said its alright because Philadelphia is really an Eagles town anyway. Boy that really burned me up, look I'm the biggest Eagles fan I know, but the Phillies have won two world championships since 1980 and last time I checked I didn't have any Super Bowl t-shirts with the Eagles logo on it. So if Philly is any kind of town it really should be a town dedicated to a team that has actually claimed the title "World Champion" at least once.

The look I shot this guy must have cut right through his being, but later I thought it wasn't him saying that, its what the NFLization has done to our psyche. The NFL has taken over everything related to sports. Its already a given that we talk about it every week starting with training camp and preseason games in August through the Super Bowl in, yuk, February now. Then we bleed into the combine, then the free agency period, then the draft and before you know it we are in the summer and training camps are about to start. It has become a never ending cycle that doesn't leave page one of the sports section. And for what? The NFL currently plays a 16 game schedule and yeah I know they are thinking of adding one or two games, but in the end we spend all this time talking about what will amount to at most as 16 regular season games now. All this time and attention focused on just 16 games. Its too much focus for just that few a number of games.

When you look at other professional sports like baseball, hockey and basketball you have at least 80 games to get excited about. There is no way we should devote this much time and effort to 16 appearances a year. I urge you to do what you can to keep your NFLization at a minimum, for the sanity of us all.

Rites of Spring

Well, I know the winter must be ending soon. There are some annual indicators that let me know the warmer weather is on the way. In our grandparents time, they probably looked to the blooming pear trees or listened for the sounds of songbirds returning to the air. For those of us in the modern day, there are two clearer indicators of spring that we can anticipate each year. First, is that every year at this time I read the same article about Kobe, LeBron, KG or some other straight to the NBA star and how they really wish they could have been in the NCAA tournament and that their only regret about having skipped college. The article is always the same - every year. The second sign of spring is that this is also the time of year when we hear the Cubs fans saying, 'this is our year', and '100 plus years of frustration is about to be over'. Let me tell you a secret Cubs fans - no, it is not your year. But, I do appreciate you letting me know the temperatures are about to turn for the better. I am ready for that.