A weekend without football

There’s no football this weekend.

That’s the first time since early August it’s been accurate to say that, if you count preseason games, and of course you do. If you’re reading this, you’re definitely the kind of person who cares very deeply about preseason games, and you’re in good company, because I do too.

This is not a new subject of me, but I love the preciousness of football. There’s so little of it. I’m envious of people who love baseball. They get to follow the results of 162 games a year, and depending how the postseason goes, could end up with about 190 games to follow, give or take. Sure, you can’t live and die with every one of those games the way that football fans do, but there’s just so much baseball that happens every year.

The same is true for basketball and hockey. You get 82 games of regular season bliss. Sure, a lot of it might not be super meaningful; load management robs a good chunk of basketball games of their significance, as coaches acknowledge the rigors of a long season by resting their best and brightest to save them for when things matter most. But your squad is going to be out there two or three or even four nights a week every week for months. That’s a lot of box scores to peruse on workday mornings when you should probably be paying attention to something else.

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