The best of times, the meth of times
Oh, no, the NFL is back. No NFL means the end of summer, and summer is all fun and finding cold drinks and cool places and good water on hot days, and hotter days, and oh my god it’s so hot, I’m dying. If you were the cold-eyed sort you’d figure out which company builds the cheapest and best portable air conditioning box, and you’d invest in that. That would mean having a financial interest in the planet warming but, hey, we might already have sailed over that cliff. Mistakes were made, we’ll tell our kids, as we use rakes from the garage to fend off the hummingbird-sized malarial mosquitos that are trying to drag away the cat.
Anyway, back to the National Football League, which marks a time of the year, every year. The kids go back to school, Taylor Swift breaks up with somebody, and the sweet sound of Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth feels like methadone in your veins, even if they’re describing a train wreck. On Sunday night they’ll be describing Arizona, which won a playoff game despite its quarterback basically coming down with the shakes, versus New England With Jimmy Garoppolo, which is probably going to be a lot like Van Halen with Gary Cherone, or if you wanted a more current reference, I dunno, Coldplay with Gary Cherone. They don’t make bands like they used to, is what I’m trying to say here.
A lot of things used to be cooler, but then time passed and we woke up in this uncertain future. The Super Bowl was a million years ago, right? Here is a partial list of crazy things that happened last season: Minnesota’s Blair Walsh, who was 31-for-32 lifetime between 20 and 29 yards, missed a 27-yard field goal that would have beaten Seattle. Green Bay completed two Hail Mary throws on one drive and lost partly because Arizona’s Carson Palmer threw a touchdown pass off a defender’s helmet. The Cincinnati Bengals lost a playoff game because they played prison-yard football, so that was kind of like a greatest hits album.
The Broncos won the Super Bowl with basically a senior citizen at QB. Cam Newton sulked.
This all happened in the span of like 11 playoff games. It was all crazy. The NFL is crazy. The NFL is exhausting and amazing and when you think too much about it you get very depressed about the consequences of our entertainment. I guess it’s like that with a lot of things, but the NFL is a very obvious case.
And still it feels like methadone. It’s still amazing. It feels inevitable. Apple will kill the headphone jack on your iPhone so that you can buy US$159 ear pods that work wirelessly and can be easily lost or swallowed by children or pets, but you’ll probably buy an iPhone anyway. It’s like life: While you may be conflicted about your kids going back to school, or about whether Taylor Swift will ever really find happiness, you solider on. And most people won’t worry about how that sausage, or any sausage, gets made.
So yes, football! It’s back.
Last year this space went 132-128-6. Ten years ago this space started as a fill-in for a departing gentleman named Scott Feschuk, whose picks columns were goofy and who went on to write speeches for a prime minister, though not a prime minister that anybody really remembers. (“Paul Martin? The defence- man?”) In that time, this space is approximately 27 games under .500, so it’s basically been 10 years of slightly below-average coin flipping, but we’re open about that. Nobody knows what happened to Scott, but he wasn’t that great at picking football games, either. As always, all lines could change.