N.F.L. = No Football Love

The NFL Draft opens in 9 days, on the evening of April 28th.  I can't recall ever being more apathetic about this event, or the sport it's a part of.

As the king of American sport, the National Football League has become a 24/7/365 enterprise, complete with it's own network and a year-round calendar of events designed to ensure it never falls too far from the public consciousness during the offseason.  There's typically about a three-week breather between the Super Bowl ending and the first snippets of draft speculation beginning to pop up.  It seems the media and public take a collective deep breath through the end of February, but on March 1st hit you head on, wallpapering the airwaves with mocks and chatter about which teams will do what where.

Normally I don't have much to do with the draft machine during the month of March, with the hockey and basketball tourneys going on, there's just no time to worry about the combine.  But once the calendar turns to April, it's officially time to start checking out how things are projected to play out.  Sure predicting the draft is an inexact science, but it's fun to wade through the opinions that are out there and develop a few of your own.  Is your team picking high or low?  Will they draft for need or take the best player available?  Will one of your favorite college stars potentially be the pick?  Who will fall?  Who will be reached for?  Which bust will go a pick or two before a Hall of Famer?  Debating and speculating on all these questions used to bring me great joy, but for some reason this year, they are not.

There are a number of reasons for this, labor strife of course leads the way.  I pretty much cut ties with the league soon after the lockout started, about the time the words "injuction" and "decertification" began to outnumber every other type of news 10 to 1.  Stopped tuning in to some of my favorite sports programs to avoid the discussion, changed the channel on others when it came up, unfollowed 20 or so football folks on Twitter, simply went into NFL sensory-deprivation.  This is not to say I consider myself any less rabid a fan, just that courtroom legalities are for lawyers to consider, and not worth my time and attention.  There has been no real news to follow with free agency on hold, and even if there were, how am I supposed to muster any enthusiasm for a season that may never happen?  The whole thing seems to ring hollow. 

But beyond the fact that they're might not be a next season, there's a bigger problem: This year's crop of players just isn't that good.  Now I have to throw in the caveat that this stuff is tough to judge, you never really know how guys will develop, etc., but at the moment, I see a lot of teams uncertain about who they're going to pick, which points to a lack of compelling choices.  For example, Vikings fans are trying to talk themselves into a QB as a franchise savior.  Problem is, it's a different guy every week.  First it was Ryan Mallet, who'd be a steal at #12, then it was Cam Newton potentially falling, next it was Jake Locker making the workout leap back into the middle of the first round.  At this point, the whole thing seems about as firm as the midsection of your average NFC North fan after 6 months of winter.

None of this is a surprise if you watched any appreciable amount of college football last season.  There is one player that I would be legitimately excited to see my team draft, Patrick Peterson from LSU, and there is zero chance he'll be available by the time they get on the clock.  During the last week the hot names thrown about have been a DE/OLB who was suspended all of last season and an offensive tackle who I heard described as having "not what you'd call elite talent".  If that doesn't get you buzzing, well then I don't know what to tell you.

Which leads us to the final, and biggest, problem that I'm left to ponder, is it possible I'm just losing my passion for the Vikings offseason?  Once upon a time, I'd dig into any topic with gusto, now it all just leaves me cold.  It's not because they stink (if anything that makes the offseason more fun, not less), but more because NFL fans in general are starting to get on my nerves.  I'll cop to the irony in someone like me saying another person is taking an element of sports too seriously, but have you seen some of these people?  They're debating who offers the best value in the 4th round, which quarterback's mechanics translate best to the pros, and a host of other topics, to which I can only reply: NERDS!

It might be different if I followed another non-cursed franchise, but discussion of the Vikings fortunes strikes me as more pointless with every passing year.  Give me any what-if scenario you please, and I will respond with a simple "Makes no difference", because until the curse is lifted, nothing will.  You want to speculate on how the hex started, and what we can do about lifting it, then I'm all ears.  But until you start on those grounds, you are wasting everyone's time.

Many fans may not believe this, but that just means they are either in denial, or have not been following this team long enough.  All the players in the world can do nothing when it comes to the cosmic, keep that in mind.