The beginning of football season this year has me a little more excited than normal for a couple of reasons.
The White Sox being horrible and boring and all in at the same time is probably the biggest reason I’m so happy to see football again. Like most Sox fans, even pessimistic ones like myself, I came into this year feeling like they would at least make a run at playing playoff baseball. I thought the bullpen closer situation would work itself out by May and the Sox would be the default winner of poor AL Central Division. Adding Adam Dunn’s 38HR’s would bolster the offense and if Konerko, CQ, and Rios just had career average years, the Sox offense would be fun to watch. I was wrong. The White Sox took on the personality of Paul Konerko (and that’s works for him) and acted like they didn’t care the entire year. I checked out in June and would occasionally see what was going on when they pulled within 5 games of first place, but never really emotionally invested back into this team.
I stopped watching sports in my house around the end of May. I figured if the Sox were going to be boring, I would take a 3 month sports watching hiatus in my house and make sure my wife noticed. For the entire summer I’ve gotten to know the Kardashians, Bravo’s summer TV schedule, and started to admire Bill Rancic. Now that football has started, there are no arguments about who gets to watch whatever they want Saturdays and Sundays. I wisely sacrificed choosing what we watch on the TV for 3 months so that September through December I can watch football in my sweats on the couch for 12 hours a day. I plan on taking another TV leave again in February and March so that come April (baseball’s first month, NBA, and NHL playoffs) I get the TV back. You might say all this is dumb and unnecessary, but I’m married and we only have one Comcast box. I want to stay happily married more than I care about anything else and want my wife to enjoy living with me so these are the choices I make.
Fantasy football is really fun. I’m only in two leagues because I think if you are in more than that, you start neglecting some and then all of your teams suffer. This year I’m in 2 ten team leagues where I feel I know more about football than all but maybe 3 guys.
College football is really fun. I’m a Florida State fan and this is the best FSU team in the past decade. When the Seminoles aren’t loaded, I still pay attention to college football and pull for certain teams (Michigan, Oregon, and Tennessee) but having the Noles be awesome just makes Saturdays a little more exciting. I even went out and bought a new Florida State shirt and hat. I felt like, who cares, I’m rich anyway, let’s gear up and get some new Saturday outfits.
But a new reason to be excited for football season sprung up on me Sunday afternoon around 1230 and that is the possibility of the Bears being a fun team to watch. Because I’m a White Sox fan, I’m usually pretty tempered when it comes to my expectations of the Chicago Cubs of the NFL, the Bears. Actually, to be more honest, I’m a Bears hater. I always think they are going to stink because they’ve burned me so much over the course of my life. The 90’s Bears, the Jim Miller 2001 Eagles loss, the Steve Smith Panther’s 2005 loss, the Super Bowl in 2006 with Rex, and then last year when Cutler hurt his woman parts and Green Bay beat the Bears in the NFC Championship game. So even when the Bears have been good in the past decade, it’s been more fool’s gold than the real thing. (I do think they were legit in 2006 when they went to the Super Bowl but having Grossman start at QB sort of even made you question that team) Anyway, my point is that I don’t expect much from the Bears and this year was no exception. Now, granted it was only one game, but the Bears looked really good. And it wasn’t in a lucky sort of good way where they got every break. The Bears front four on defense got after Matty Ice, they stopped Michael Turner sans the one run, Cutler and the offense looked nice, and Matt Forte looked like a top 10 RB. It might be that Atlanta isn’t as good as people anticipated, I now have to think they will be an 8-8 team but the Bears won that game and did so handily.
Do I think the Bears are a Super Bowl contender? Slow down chief, it’s September. But I am excited to see what they will do these next two weeks against the Saints and Packers. Instead of calling those games blowouts (like I would have Sunday morning), I’m giving the Bears a fighters chance. I will have more on the Bears Saints later in the week but for now, let me enjoy my excitement for football season and have the Bears be a part of that excitement.
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