HOF My Ass

Had the NFL network on yesterday for distraction.

I am not really into the playoff hype. I mean, I am as giddy as a school child about today's game, I cannot wait for 4:35, I cannot really explain to you what I am feeling.

I have been over all this before - what football means to me, what THE PATS mean to me, the connection to my father, the connection to Keith (who shamed me into PATRIOTS fidelity).

I shall not blubber over you with my emotions and my thoughts.

When I say I am not really into the playoff hype I mean the talk. The endless analyzing and over analyzing, dredging up decades old history, re-hashing recent history, all that jazz.

I don't give a damn about anybody's opinion. I don't give a damn about anybody's prediction.

I do soak up the emotional hype. The intensity of an NFL playoff game. The do or die atmosphere. The assumed fanaticism of casual fans and even non-fans. The fact that everywhere you turn on TV, on the radio, in stores, on the road - you see GO PATS.

Bakeries baking PATS cookies and brownies and pies. PATS flags and balloons and gear in supermarkets. PATS flags on houses.

A bunch of guys came through the liquor store this week wearing PATS hats, jerseys, sweatshirts, jackets.

To the guys I know are true fans - through endless mini cash register conversations going back to training camp - to those guys I said "Go PATS." High fived a few.

I refused to say it to anybody who was an obvious band wagon rider.

Sorry - even a man like me with relaxed convictions has to stand for something once in a while.

No other sport carries with it the post season intensity that football does.

I love it.

I have strong feelings about today's game. I have even been throwing out a predicted score and outcome, something I never do.

I won't do that here.

My son Keith is quite superstitious, even more so than me. I cannot harsh his vibe with my expectations.

Here is the truly amusing thing about this post. When I watched the NFL network as I ate brunch before heading into HELL/The Asylum yesterday, they were covering the 2015 Hall of Fame nominations.

Going over the process, explaining how it works. The subjective nature of the beast pissed me off. That's what I came in here to write about.

Hence the title, which I have decided to go with.

But playoff fever swept me away. Came up and out of nowhere. The words pored out, my fingers flew and my thoughts were laid bare for all to see.

For a football fan the NFL playoffs are enormous in intensity, implication, and emotion. Sometimes you ride high all the way to the end. Sometimes you crash and get crushed along the way.

But either way you feel alive.

So fucking alive.

I'll talk about the Hall of Fame some other time.

Right now the only thing I give a damn about is PATS/ravens.

4:35.

Cannot get here fast enough.