FOOTBALL LIVES

Oh hey...the first NFL preseason games are tonight.

With more screaming fangirls than Beatlemania, it's the 2011 NFL Season: Risen from the Ashes!!

Yeaaaahh 70's montage background music...

In all seriousness, this is going to be the best season of football since...well, forever. Why is that you ask? What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Since the NFL survived a lockout and the rest of us survived all of the coverage along with all of the people pulling their hair out wondering if there were going to be any games played, it's as if the football world is ready for...you know, the world. Lucky for all of the football fans out there, the Hall of Fame game was the only "casualty" of the lockout, and everyone managed to have decent sized training camp sessions and have more than enough time to trade and make transactions with draft picks.

When it comes to trades and draft picks, it doesn't seem like there was any rush or time lost, even with the wait for free agent eligibility. In all honesty, I think that the lockout was a perfect time to devise trades under the covers. Sure, it might have been more stressful in some ways, but I'm pretty sure with the lack of communication between coaches and the media with a few things, it allowed the big corporate guys to focus more on the prize in case if football came back. C'mon, let's be honest, I think they purposely kept us on edge so they could be sneaky and think about team matters without us bothering them. But that's besides the point.

So anyway, the lockout business...

Every time there has been a lockout, it seemed like every sports league had gotten stronger and a lot more efficient after that. That, or maybe that it was the rush and novelty of something coming back after a near-catastrophic issue. The last lockout I can fully remember was the NHL lockout in 2004-2005, and the season it came back, it was like everyone in the United States and Canada was about hockey to some degree.

For some reason, I feel like the NFL lockout is so much bigger than this.
Firstly, nobody ever had to go through a season without football (meaning this NFL lockout was the first of it's kind ever), and something like this would have resulted in an absolute culture shock to everybody. We probably would have seen grown men cry than guys watching Brian's Song or something. Even though there are a whole bunch of new and revised rules, people are glad they can save their tears for something else more important.

The one rule that are probably going to drive people nuts is that more plays are going to be under review than usual.  This means that less challenges will be used and more waiting is imposed. Good times, right? There are also a lot of nitpicking when it comes to defenseless players and the approach of tackles and other clashes during plays on the field. For example, things such as some forms of "launching" oneself against a player could result in a penalty and/or fine.

Since when have we gotten so nitpicky? Yeah, I know they're more prone to injury nowadays, like how they pull a hammy once they step out of the shower or get a contusion once they get hit with a towel from the locker room. I'm just kidding with that. But really, they're getting so many more injuries now than they did 30 years ago. I don't know why it's like that. Maybe some sports scientist can chime in on this blog someday and explain to me why that is. Anywho, it's irritating to someone like me who just started taking football seriously and still sees injury despite efficient padding on the players. Darned physics and gravity and stuff. You like to make people so difficult to work with.

Aside from everything I've complained about, this football season seems a lot more organized and a lot more reliably handled than before. Also, things just seem so much more exciting now that football season is coming around again despite fear of a shortened season or no season at all. I never thought I would say that, but it's true; I'm glad to see it back.


Time to bring out the facepaint, beads, cheese puffs, beer, and the imprinted man chair.
Are you ready for some football?

--AZ

PLUS, I also joined a fantasy football league. You will see a log/diary on my Tumblr. account (sportsnutblogs.tumblr.com) with posts on how badly I'm doing. There's a first time for everything, right? I hope to see some fans of the Carebear-Sacking Squad once this season is over. :-)