One More Game

"From Dallas to Los Angeles, Cleveland to Baltimore, New York City to Kansas City, modern American men found a truth and beauty in pro football that was more reliable, more sharply defined, than almost any other aspect of their lives."

I am reading a book titled "America's Game" by Michael MacCambridge. It is a history of professional football stretching from the time that football was a mere afterthought in the world of professional sports, to what it is now - King of All Sports.

That quote is from the book and echoes what I have been saying all my life. Football gives you what life does not. Intensity. You sleep walk through your boring, disappointing life, When you tune in a football game your head explodes. You realize you are actually alive.

As a football fan you get to scrape yourself up out of the torturous and boring grind of daily survival to watch a game with huge implications. If your team loses one game it feels like death. Of course we all know one regular season loss does not kill a season, but it feels like it does.

16 fucking games. That's all you get if you don't make the playoffs. The maximum number of games you can play in one season is 20. This is why football is so much more intense than the other three major sports. This is why football makes you feel alive.

Baseball - 162 games
Basketball - 82 games
Hockey - 82 games

Football. 20. MAX!

This football season brought me an enormous amount of joy. And THE PATS are going back to the Super Bowl. Unfuckingbelievable. Three years in a row. Eleventh appearance overall. It just does not get any better than that.

I watched a lot of football this year. A LOT.  So many good games, a few epic games, so many great players, young and old. In fact it was super cool to see young players tearing up the league at the same time the old folks were killing it - especially in the QB position.

The four top rated offensive teams made it to the Conference Championship round. Are you fucking kidding me? And both games went into OT.

I watched a lot of coverage, a lot of analysis. I felt football smart for the first time in a long time.

One game left.

Hunter S. Thompson was a huge football fan. He killed himself on February 20, 2005 a couple of weeks after Super Bowl XXXIX. He did not kill himself because football season was over, but it was in his head and in his suicide note. He actually titled his suicide note "Football Season Is Over." The first three words of the note were "No more games."

This makes perfect sense to me.

To my family and friends, NO I am not contemplating suicide. Strangely enough I still have a tiny diseased corner of my brain that still believes I can make my life and Carol's life better. I am making the point in my own unique way that football is so intense a sport that when the season is over a fan feels the abyss. Nothingness. Empty. How the fuck am I going to juice up my life now?

I need this game this year. I realized how badly I want it as I watched THE PATS play the chiefs. I was in agony in the 4th quarter of that game. I would have jumped through the fucking picture window if they lost.

Now we got the rams in Super Bowl LIII.

I need this. I need this more than I have in a very long time. I need THE PATS to win.

My emotions about this are all tied up in Carol's health challenges in ways I cannot explain. There is a lot going on in my head, some of which I don't even understand. My emotions are tied up in my love of football and my love for THE PATS. In the fact that THE PATS lost Super Bowl LII.

One more game.