| Authored by Andrew Perna - 8th August, 2006 - 5:34 pm
 Can you smell that? Sorry, not that I had quite a bit of my favorite Letizia’s pizza last night. That’s the smell of pigskin, grass, (whether it be real or astroturf) and beer. Those fragrant smells mean that football is upon us and the NFL’s regular season is less than a month away.
Fantasy leagues are holding their drafts and the preseason has officially begun. For me, it all become real when I turned on NBC and saw my Philadelphia Eagles facing off against the Oakland Raiders in the annual Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio.
By the way - Am I the only person who feels like it’s going to take a long time to get used to watching the NFL on NBC? I kept blinking rapidly to make sure I wasn’t watching Arena Football. Then, I opened my ears and heard Al Michaels and John Madden, who have to be the oldest announcing duo in the history of television.
For most of the game, Michaels praised Madden for having been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame over the weekend. While I agree Madden is more than deserving of a place in Canton, he’s not Vince Lombardi, or even Bill Belichick. It’s not entirely his fault, or maybe it is, but most of football’s newer fans know Madden more for his legendary football video game franchise than for his successful coaching career.
Watching my Eagles lose to the Raiders wasn’t all too depressing seeing as it was the first game of the preseason, and Philadelphia escaped without losing any starters to major injury.
You get a real sense for how important football is to some Americans when they get their first scent of the gridiron in early August. My cousin Ken, who has been a die-hard Eagles fan his entire life, called from Delaware to make sure I remembered that our Eagles would be on television Sunday night. I appreciated the gesture, but under the circumstances, I couldn’t believe that Ken had remembered.
You see, he welcomed his first child into the world last week. Yet, he remembered that his Eagles were playing, despite the lack of sleep from waking up every hour on the hour with his newborn baby girl. What’s most surprising then having remembered about the game, is that his wife Alicia, allowed him to watch the game without problem. I’m sure Donovan McNabb would be pleased to know that my beautiful new cousin Keeleigh watched her first Eagles game at just 4 days old!!
While your reading this column, the 2006 NFL season is getting closer and closer, and I couldn’t be happier. I wasn’t always an NFL fan, the NBA was my first love. I grew up in the Jordan Era, and it was hard for any kid my age not to gravitate towards basketball and the NBA of the early nineties. As much as I love the NBA, I get a majority of my excitement from whether or not my Indiana Pacers have a shot at contending for the NBA title.
When it comes to football, I’m excited for the whole NFL experience. I love the fact that I can sit on my couch for an entire Sunday and be entertained all day. If I could install a McDonald’s drive-thru window right next to my television and get one of those contraptions NASCAR drivers use to pee in while racing I wouldn’t have to leave either one of my cheeks from the soft cushions of my La-Z-Boy.
Football also has the most parody of any the four major sports. Sure the Patriots won three of four Super Bowls, but each time their team was distinctly different and they won playing a different type of football. One website has the Vegas odds on next year’s Super Bowl listed, posting the Colts as the most likely candidate to win the biggest game in all of sports at 11-2 odds.
These things are updated constantly, and were first formulated minutes after the Steelers won the whole thing earlier this year. Say what you want about baseball and it being the national pastime, but football is America’s true number one sporting passion.
As an NBA fanatic, it has always been hard for me to find another guy who knows and cares as much about the game of basketball than I do. And as a Yankee fan, I have trouble getting people to discuss baseball with me because they immediate label me as a ‘front-runner’ or begin screaming at me like a steroid-enraged little league Dad because of how much they despise the Yucking Fankees.
But when it comes to football anyone and everyone is willing to flap gums about the pigskin. Whether the discussion be about your favorite NFL team, or your fantasy team it seems as though every man on the planet has something to add to the conversation.
Just last fall, I was at an accounting dinner in Massachusetts talking with my buddy Paul about my team in our fantasy football league when a guy I had never seen in my life tapped me on the shoulder.
“Did I hear you say you just traded for Donovan McNabb last week?,” he said.
“Unfortunately, yes you did. I traded for him hours before he suffered that damn sports hernia.” I responded.
“Dude, that stinks. Best of luck with your team.” He added as he vanished to the dessert table.
Only football could help two people make that kind of quick, yet sincere, connection at a boring business dinner. So bring on the fall. If summer must end soon, let it be football that puts the nail in the coffin.
So bring on Miami-Pittsburgh. September 7th can’t come soon enough...
I also have to remember to make sure that my first child is born in February just after the Super Bowl. This way, my kid will be nearing six months old when the NFL season rolls around. I don’t want to take the chance my cousin Ken took having two responsibilities as important as watching our Eagles and caring for a newborn child.
Of course, I’ll have my kid stumping the Schwab well before he can even feed himself...
Andrew can be reached at Andrew.Perna@RealGM.com |
