Fatpickle: Football Makes Everything Better

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…well, maybe not for the 2,500 NFL players that are reporting to training camp this week. For the next 3 weeks they’re going to be sweating their sacks off in two a day practices. Knocking the shit out of each other, sitting in endless meetings and soaking achy muscles in ice tubs. How do they do that anyway? Just the thought of lowering my boys into ice…not worried about shrinkage…worried about disappearance! Anyway, I’m happier than a puppy with 2 peters because the beginning of training camp means that the 2009 NFL season is upon us and football just makes everything better! Yes, it actually improves quality of life. Sound silly? It’s not; I’ll prove it to you.

10 things football makes better.

#10 – Food – I’m trying to figure out how to lose 10 lbs before the start of the season because I know I’m going to put on 15 during the season! Wings, chips, pizza and dips all taste better during football season. I think Velveeta was invented specifically for the NFL season. It gives us all a reason to eat bad foods because that’s what you do during football games. It just is.

#9 – Sports Blogs – Let’s face it, without football, blogs kind of suck. How much baseball can we talk about? How many top 10 lists can we make up? Bloggers need coaches like Dennis Green and Jim Mora going berserk, that’s good material. Bloggers need bad play calling and underachieving draft picks. And let’s face it; you want to come here to see Cooley talking about the Cowboys, not Fatpickle talking about cheese.

#8 – Sundays – Sunday, the day for rest and relaxation. NOT! There should be nothing relaxing about Sunday. Sundays are for getting nervous, excited and pissed at the Redskins…sometimes all at the same time! So forget about reading the Sunday paper in the lazy boy and watching Tom Watson play golf. It’s so much more fun figuring out how you’re going to pay your bookie because Eli Manning threw a pick 6 in the last minute. It was a sure thing the Giants were going to beat the Bengals.

#7 – Sports Talk Radio- Similar to the bloggers, the radio personalities need some material. How long can they talk about the Orioles and Nats losing? What they need is someone to shoot themselves in the leg, they need an owner having dinner with Shanahan, they can run with that. They need the guy calling in who just lost $500 on the Eli Manning play, that’s good radio.

#6 – Beer – Beer is better during the NFL season …oh who am I kidding? Beer is good all year long; the NFL season does nothing to make it better. But, when the Redskins lose, beer helps…temporarily.

#5 – Tailgating- Unless you’ve been to a Kenny Chesney or Jimmy Buffet concert this summer, you probably haven’t tailgated in awhile. Football gives us a reason to do so. Football gives us a reason for more food, Jell-O shooters, tossing the football around and cornhole. Good times with family, friends and strangers. And if you are tailgating, it sounds like Mama Cooley has the right game plan to follow.

#4 – Personal Relationships – From February to July I talk once or twice a month with some of the people that mean the most to me, but come football season, we may talk once or twice a day. We are always emailing, texting or phoning each other to talk about the games and events of the week. Football brings us closer for 6 months a year and I’m thankful for that.

#3- TV Viewing – summertime is the worst for TV, but that will end soon. We now have the NFL channel, the Sunday Ticket and TIVO working for us. We can watch an entire replay of the game in 60 minutes, anytime we want! No more reruns of the New Adventures Of Old Christine, we got choices!

#2 – Hope and Optimism – There is nothing I want to see more than a parade in Washington D.C for the Super Bowl Champion Washington Redskins. As the season starts I feel like that can happen. I see Cooley on the left and Portis on the right, Obama in the middle. I see it. I’m happy. When I finish this post I’m checking flights to Miami. I’m drinking the Kool Aid; I’ve got my Nikes on.

#1 – Fantasy Football – Is there anything better than Fantasy Football? Most of you are probably working on your cheat sheets and sleeper picks already. The drafts (more fun, food and booze) are so much fun. In late August I will travel back to VA for my league’s 12th annual fantasy draft. 12 years ago we were single college aged guys with no wives or kids. We return this year, most of us married, and we now have 12 kids among us. We’re still kids, just with more chins. We come from Florida, we come from Ohio, it doesn’t matter…football keeps us together. And I (the 22 Swinging Dicks) am going to kick some ass this year.Now after all that, I have 1 question for you…ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?

Cheers and Hail

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