We laughed, we cried, in some cases we hurled things (remote controls, expletives) at the television. But now, as we enter the last true football weekend of the season, it’s time to come to grips with the fact that next Sunday, there will not be a single NFL game.
Sure, if you’re a special kind of degenerate, you can place a bet on the Pro Bowl in order to give it some kind of meaning, but we all know a glorified exhibition when we see it. Even the Super Bowl, with all its build-up and pageantry, has a starkly different feel than a true NFL Sunday. Frankly the conference championship games moving back a few hours has made this week start to feel oddly bastardized, but there’s football on when it’s light outside, so I’m rolling with it.
The problem here isn’t really one of sports, but more so the dawning of the worst month of the year. Read up on the history of February some time, and you’ll see that it’s the black sheep of the months, oddly shoe-horned into whatever space in the calendar needed to be filled. In fact, I’m making the decision right now to officially revoke month status, as well as its name, terming it only “the period of time that must be endured between January and March”, shortened to “the period of time” or T-POT if you’re a real brevity fan.
There might be a lot of Roman historical mumbo jumbo out there explaining why T-POT is shorter than all of the real months, but it’s obvious to anyone who’s paying attention why that’s the case. Whoever was in charge of the calendar decision making in ancient times, we’ll call him Bill the Calendar Guy for our purposes here, was just looking for an excuse to whittle down the length of this impostor. Bill knew that he’d be stuck inside his mud hut for days on end, nothing but the same roasted mutton day after day, without a tomato or apple in sight, freezing his toga-wearing ass off every time he had to venture outside an empty the chamber pots. In other words, it’s just like today, the dead of winter has sucked for time immemorial.
So being the sharp guy that he was (because after all, they don’t put you in charge of calendar decisions if you’re not sharp, you might turn swap Tuesday with Saturday and all hell breaks loose), Bill made a call, and slapped a couple of those days onto other months at T-POT’s expense. Even if nothing had changed on March 1st, you could still flip that calendar and feel like there was hope. Like many a great man in history, Bill understood the power of marketing in human psychology; if he were alive today, there’s no doubt he’d be making a fortune selling Ed Hardy t-shirts and Lucky Brand jeans.
Subsequent decision makers followed the lead of this visionary, and refused to put anything worthwhile within the bounds of T-POT. Groundhog Day? Valentine’s Day? President’s Day? Are you kidding me? Much like the definition of a sport, there is the definition of a holiday, and it's quite simple: Do people get work off? Not just government employees and bankers either, I’m talking about the vast majority of the working population. With all due respect to America’s presidents, what you have here is not a holiday. I wish it were a holiday, put it to a vote and I’d give it a yea in a minute, but as it sits right now, it’s just another Monday. Granted a Monday with less traffic. Sorry.
(In my wonderings about this topic, I also stumbled across the interesting fact the T-POT is National Bird Feeding Month. Are you f*cking with me here? We’re going to have a celebration of feeding and watching birds during a month when they flee the northern half of the country? What a swell idea! Tell you what, it’s Hockey Day in Minnesota tomorrow, but what do you say we move it the second Saturday in July? Sure none of the teams will be playing, so there won’t be any games to watch, but we could all go sit in arenas wearing sandals, how’s that for novelty. I guess the upshot is, because the birds are having a tough time, you’re supposed to offer them extra food and shelter. Thing is, I don’t see a whole lot of birds whipping around my neighborhood in the dead of winter, they leave town for more hospitable climes. In that sense, we probably could all learn a thing or two from the birds, I mean beyond the hilarity of taking a sh*t on someone’s freshly washed car.)
Some people will try to point out that the Super Bowl occurs during T-POT, but that’s a new development, and one coldly calculated by the NFL to build additional hype. They want to throw the first week of this time frame a bone, so be it, but it’s definitely not natural.
Anyway, the month formally known as February sucks, and it will be here before you know it, good luck.
NFL Picks
2-2 last week on winner, but 0-4 against the spread, this will not stand.
Karma finally paid back the Saints for the NFC Championship game from two seasons ago, only problem was, the Vikings were the beneficiaries. I don't blame myself for that one.
The Patriots scored twice before the Broncos got off the bus, and destroyed my thoughts of a cover; I do blame myself for that one. Let the Tebow mysticism of the past few weeks get inside my head, forgetting about the Brady mysticism of the last decade. Dumb.
This week, I'm more confused than ever, but the good news is, only two opportunities to be wrong.
Baltimore @ New Englad (-7)
I'm trying to think of someone on the Ravens who can cover Rob Gronkowski, and failing. I'm also trying to reconcile how all those "New England can't win a championship with this defense" stories from a month ago have somehow been rendered moot.
The pick: New England 33, Baltimore 24
New York Giants @ San Francisco (-2.5)
Feels like the Giants, but isn't Eli Manning due for a couple bad interceptions? And isn't the likely place for that to happen on a damp and windy day in San Francisco? The other side of the coin is, if Alex Smith plays successfully against a defense that stymied Aaron Rodgers, is it time to sell your possessions and live out the final months of human existence on a beach somewhere?
The pick: San Francisco 23, New York Giants 20
So hey, that means Ravens vs. Giants in the Super Bowl. Enjoy the games and drink deep the cup of football on this final weekend.
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