How The Pandemic Saved the NFL
Here it is, the beginning of the 2022 NFL season, and we’re all pretty hyped about it. I am prepping ribs and wings for the smoker this weekend. I bought a (hopefully) fresh pair of Chiefs-red sweat pants at Goodwill. My fantasy team is locked. I can barely sleep.
I just watched the Bills humiliate the Rams, and while I don’t care at all about either team, this game felt like when you see your hometown skyline from the highway after a long road trip. I feel good now. I feel normal again.
Is this stupid? Yes, of course, everything is stupid. Somehow this is just less stupid to me. It wasn’t always like this though. I went through years where I barely watched the Chiefs let alone football in general. My team sucked, so I tuned out. I’ll say this: I’m totally OK with fairweather fandom. Who cares? I stopped watching The Office when I thought it got bad. You’re allowed to bail, you’ve only got so much time on earth, why waste it being a fan of a shitty team? But aside the highs and lows of a franchise, why am I all in on football right now?
That’s a trickier question to answer, but I think I’m not alone in pinning down at least one factor: the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). In March 2020 when everything shut down, the NBA was blindsided, games were canceled. Then came the bubble, and while I’m not an NBA guy I think a lot of my friends who are were just happy something was happening. These were dark days, and the smallest scraps felt like Thanksgiving dinner.
Baseball just kind of hung in there. I don’t look to baseball for much these days. It’s the soothing sound of Summer. It’s a good hang at the ballpark. It’s still exciting, but the Astros cheating scandal sucked. 80% of my Royals made a “don’t tread on me” stink about vaccinations. The Dodgers’ World Series win felt like a Make a Wish for Larry King. MLB is just lucky they have Shohei Ohtani and Edwin Diaz’s walkout song, because they are not bringing much else to the table for me right now. I’m a fairweather guy, what can I say?
The NFL though, is still doing it for me. And they actually came out of this looking better somehow.
It’s never just one thing, and I’m not saying covid is the sole reason the NFL is better. The last few years have seen a new class of exciting QBs ushered in that will soon take over the league. The game has seemingly gotten marginally safer, or at least I haven’t heard a horrific CTE story recently. They protect quarterbacks more, and they call pass interference more which makes games more deep ball friendly. It’s exciting!
And to match the game excitement, the media surrounding the game is better too. Talking head shows are better. The old guys are starting to age out of calling games soon. Jason Whitlock isn’t on TV any more. They added slime.
But all of this weaves together on the frame of the pandemic and lockdown and vaccines, and social distancing. Life got dark for a lot of people. A million people died. We’re all still dealing with some kind of mental strain whether we want to (or can) admit it or not.
Then here comes football. America’s smartest dumbest sport had an entire offseason to get its shit together and it kind of did. No crowds. Seems simple enough and it was. Then as if the scientists knew, they release a covid vaccine right before the Super Bowl.
The Bucs won and we got to see Tom Brady drunk. It was genuinely charming and I hate that I think that. But it’s like the first time you see a teacher at a bowling alley. It opens your world up and changes you. A hole is poked right through the mystique. Tom Brady got drunk and played catch with the Lombardi trophy on a boat then got covid. On paper this all sounds like something I would hate, but it’s 2021. Joe Biden is president now. The things that are bad don’t feel as dire now. Not that things are “good” by any stretch, things just felt less bad.
The NFL met the moment perfectly. Sometimes things just work out that way. It’s still the No Fun League. They‘re still cowardly and greedy (incredible timing to reinstate Deshaun Watson the week after Browns vs. Texans to avoid the media/fan shit show, but still make money off of him this year). But they’re less bad now. The Joe Biden of sports leagues. And after a couple years of watching people die, living in confined isolation, getting laid off, and watching the National Guard take over my neighborhood, football looks like when a dude turns into a steak on a lifeboat in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
So way to go, NFL, you did it. You conquered sports and managed to be my, and a lot of people’s, pleasant escape by doing just enough.
Listen to Joe McAdam and Cullen Crawford’s Football Friends (Who Are Gambling)
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