2009 Can Finally Begin

According to most calendars, 2009 has been going on for over eight months. For me, though, the year doesn't truly begin until the opening kickoff of the first NFL game. In the same manner, 2008 didn't end until Super Bowl XLIII was over on February 1, 2009. The Pittsburgh Steelers' victory over the Arizona Cardinals was bittersweet, because I really wanted the Steelers to lose, but quarterback Ben Roethlisberger's winning pass to Santonio Holmes with only two minutes left in the fourth quarter was undeniably impressive.

I have a visceral negative reaction to the Steelers, mostly because they recently have become the Red Sox of the NFL. They're reliably good now, and enter the playoffs as favorites perenially. You'd think I'd align them with the Patriots, because both are football teams, but I don't hate the Patriots nearly as much as you'd think. This is mostly because the Patriots belong to the whole of New England, and not just the giant cesspool that I consider Boston to be. Man, I hate Boston. This shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me remotely because I make it a point to disparage that bullshit city whenever I can. I'll steer clear of smearing it now, because I'm not confident that I'd be able to stop ranting.

As I was saying, I absolutely love the NFL. One of the reasons I don't like summer so much--beside the havoc that the humidity wreaks on my MS symptoms--is the lack of exciting sports. Sure, there's baseball, but MLB is tedious. Each game lasts at least three hours, normally, because the pace is beyond slow. I've said it before, but the main reason I like White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle is that he moves the game along at an incredibly rapid clip. Whereas most pitchers hurl baseballs with the frequency of a musket shot, Buehrle throws a barrage of pitches not unlike a machine gun. He sprays his pitches, and everyone else leisurely drips them.

Football, though, is always dramatic and exciting and altogether thrilling. It is propulsive, so even a low-scoring game can be captivating. I used to lament its overtime policy of sudden death, but now I like it. It may seem absurd that the outcome of a game should rely on the toss of a coin, but this is not really the point of the sudden-death overtime. The team who loses the coin toss should be able to use their defense well enough to stop the offense of the opposing team. If not, then they could lose. Tough shit if their offense doesn't get a chance to even the score...

Tonight's game was between the aforementioned Steelers and the Tennessee Titans. I'm not a Titans fan, but I was by default tonight because of my disdain for the Steelers. Pittsburgh ended up winning 13-10, which was a disappointment, but I was so overjoyed to watch the first NFL regular season game that I hardly cared. Plus, as I said before, I'm not really a Titans fan, so I wasn't very disheartened that Tennessee lost. I was just happy to watch the NFL, finally.

I know a lot of people who prefer college football, but I could not possibly care less about any NCAA game. This includes basketball, by the way. Each March, when I see brackets everywhere, I simply sigh and think of next September.

As for now, I could not be more content with the prospect of the new NFL season. The Bears look good--not merely okay, as they usually do--and they even have an actual quarterback this year in Jay Cutler. I'll be in the hospital for a game or two, but Northwestern has such immaculate facilities that I'll be able to watch games on a large flat-screen TV. I think this is much more preferable to being physically present at a game, and, again, this is not simply because of the MS and the physical restrictions it imposes. More often than not, it's better to watch games closely on a high-definition television than to freeze in the biting cold (which can be incapacitating, like a prolonged, full-body ice cream headache) and act like you know what the hell is happening on the field.

I get an inappreciable amount of satisfaction from seeing incontrovertible evidence that can deflate a crowd's incredulity, no matter how vociferous their blind, ignorant indignation.

Unless, of course, the crowd is in Chicago.

R