Week 1: Harvesting the Vegetables

For better or worse, the National Football League, in all it's glory, got off to an illustrious start this week. The start of the football season is the time of year that men love and girlfriends and wives loath. I think women get more pissed off about men watching football than if they were watching hard-core pornography. I actually think most women (and possibly more than I think) would be more into hard-core porno than a Monday night showdown between two AFC West rivals - and more into the agility of John Holmes than Jake Plummer. But when you think about it, you can't really blame them. Watching football for hours on end is like hitting the power button on your brain and completely committing to vegetable status. A brisk game of connect four would be more thought provoking than staring mindlessly at whatever consolation Fox decides to throw up in their 2 pm slot (Mountain time). But the reality of the situation it that football is still pretty cool. Relaxing into mindlessness is comforting, however, for some reason more so for men than women.

Football is the modern day version of those gladiator fights that Romans used to have (or was that the Greeks?) minus the climactic death of one of the participants. (Of course I am an expert in the history of ancient sporting events because of some movie I saw a while back with Russell Crowe) I wonder how women back in those days felt about the gladiator events. I wonder if all the men sat around with fresh bags of Cheetos and their hands down their pants gambling on who was going to kill whom. Unfortunately that was probably the case.

Maybe the NFL should have a fight to the death segment of each game. Each team could take their third string quarterback and have a gladiator fight at halftime. The winner would be awarded three points - the value of a field goal. Or maybe the kickers should fight to the death at halftime. Then the losing team would not only have lost three points but also the ability to kick field goals for the rest of the game. That would make the the position of back-up kicker extremely nerve racking. The poor soul would want to be good enough to make field goals in the event of the death of the first stringer, but certainly not good enough to be promoted to first string. I think I'd shank a few here and there just to stay in the second fiddle position.

Despite the onset of pissed off women and degenerating men, we were blessed with a week of fantastic football. We saw a left handed pass (from our very own heroric quarterback) and two, count-em two, Monday Night Football games. Not only were there two Monday Night games (this probably should have been a national holiday), but MNF was no longer on public television. ESPN is now the proud owner of the event that takes the brutallity of the NFL one day more than it really needs to go. Granted, Disney is the owner of ESPN and ABC and this was a strategic move most certianly for their own financial gain, but nevertheless still kinda sad. I'm sure Mickey and Minnie spent the entirety of Monday evening sobbing in each others arms.

So let's join Mickey and Minnie in a collective sob for the next four months of vegetating men and cranky women, but feel free to put your hands down your pants and grab some Cheetos.

Throw John Poole a flee flicker Hail Mary at poolejohn@gmail.com