I'm sorry, Tom Brady. It's not you, it's me. (Jim)

The date is September 8th, 2013 and I am driving through Wyoming.  I glance at the clock to see 11:05, AM.  A few minutes ago we passed a sign that read "Togwottee Pass, Elevation 9658."  Indeed, we had just crossed the Continental Divide, and the day was beautiful in a dark, wild way, with low gray clouds clipping the towering granite peaks around us on all sides and casting mysterious shadows in the valleys.  At a pull off, we were blessed with this view:



The Teton valley from Togwottee Pass

And yet I found my mind was not here; in fact I was actively failing in regards to my constant goal of living in the moment and being mindful of the present while on this trip.  Where was my mind?  Orchard Park, NY.  Two hours ahead of us near the east coast, Tom Brady was behind center for the first time of the new season, his bombardier eyes coolly surveying the defense, licking the tips of his index and middle fingers as he prepared to make the call.  But I do not know if he was in the shotgun or under center.  No clue as to the set.  I was missing opening weekend of the NFL.

I missed the irony at the time, but while I was missing Buffalo play New England, I was able to observe Buffalo play

I have a confession to make.  Since 2001, I have missed five Patriots games that I can think of.  I can even remember the circumstances with alarming clarity.  In 2003, I missed a game because I was attending a Redsox playoff game against the Athletics at Fenway with my Dad.  In 2004, I missed one to see Big n Rich / Brooks and Dunn play at the Tweeter Center (or whatever the hell it is called now).  In 2008, I missed opening day due to attending the wedding of a good friend, a bittersweet day in which I was blissfully spared the image of Tom Brady getting nuked for the season.  In 2009, I missed an October game while running the Seacoast Half Marathon in New Hampshire.  In 2012, I missed a late September game to support Lindsay as she ran a 50K trail race in Vermont.*



You know who DOESN'T look ridiculous while performing in athletics?  Tom Brady.

*The previous year, I had planned my first marathon (2011 Mount Desert Island in Bar Harbor, ME) such that I could collapse back in the hotel room with a six pack of Budweiser and a package of room temperature hot dogs in time for the Pats game.  Unfortunately, there is proof:

I'm not proud, but this happened.  Those hot dogs were never even warmed.

Did I mention I like football?  And that my team is the Patriots?  Up until 2001, we did not have cable (or satellite, or antenna to be clear) TV in our house.  My parents, in one of the many good decisions made during my childhood, had pulled the plug when I was a wee lad to spare my sister and I from watching too much Hey Dude or Clarissa Explains it All growing up.  And it worked, although being unable to watch sporting events at home meant I really had no cause to care about any professional team and missed out on most of the, ahem, great Bledsoe and Hugh Millen (lol) years.  However, a certain event in September of 2001 left us feeling cut off from society, and shortly after we had cable.  And the ability to watch the magical 2001 Patriots season, all of the games watched with my father right up until the Super Bowl victory.  (I would not suggest, of course, that the event to which I am alluding was in fact a brilliant, evil, maniacal plot of deception executed by the NFL Shadow Council to improve ratings....or would I?)


Make no mistake.  This man is pure fucking evil.

Indeed, some of my best memories of the 'aughts' (are we calling the 00's that yet?  Because I'm never writing "00's" again) involved the Patriots.  I went to school in Worcester, MA and enjoyed several dominant seasons alongside my fellow student fans.  In true nerdy fashion, most of the games I watched while doing homework (often with a particularly violent and bearded friend of mine, you know who you are).  I cannot say that my obsession with this team helped my grades in kinematics, differential equations or advanced engineering design endeavors, but I sure enjoyed watching the team play with the Worcester townies.  When I was home in NH, I had just as much fun watching with my father and endlessly debating and second guessing every call, and dammit shut up old man, any other time that draw on 3rd and 5 would have been converted.  Trust the coach.

Trust me.  It is your....destiny

And for every Patriots game I made sure I saw, you can believe that I watched at least two other games on any NFL weekend, plus the occasional Monday or Thursday night game, and of course every game during the playoffs.  I really like football.  In the four years we lived at our house in central New Hampshire, I made a ritual on NFL Sundays - up early to feign productivity with a workout / errands / yard work / run such that by 1pm I could be guiltless on the couch in pajama pants, adult beverage in hand, and lie horizontal gazing at the TV until the last game of the evening was over.  I've done silly things to not miss a game.  When traveling by myself through Virginia in 2009, I rented a sketchy $29 motel room at 1pm so I would not miss two Wild Card Weekend games (and had to explain to the convenience store clerk from where I purchased a six pack, that yes, New Hampshire is a state, you ignorant southerner).  Two weeks later, I passed up an opportunity to backpack in the Nantahala Wilderness so I would not miss the Championship weekend games. 

My obsession with the NFL is frankly at odds with the rest of my character.  First of all, I despise the typical Masshole Patriots fan - among the truly most obnoxious human beings on the planet, and I am completely perplexed why anyone would actually choose to live inside the 495 corridor; indeed, my consolation when the Pats lose is that people like this suffer:

I have not the words to express my hatred for you...

....or you

I like to hike, run, and otherwise play in the woods.  I like reading books with one word titles like "Cod" and "Dirt" and "Cooked".  I am an extreme introvert and dislike bars and other loud confusing places.  I have a contempt of conspicuous consumption culture and will go to my grave before spending a dime on an Apple or Harley product.  For the most part I am not interested in television despite a fondness for Family Guy (another holdover from college) and an inexplicable interest in cooking competitions.  I still don't get what the hell Instagram is for.  Bottom line - the NFL fits a persona that really isn't exactly me.  I have always viewed it as a guilty pleasure, and been vaguely annoyed that the team has been able to imprint a fondness for them on my psyche, despite the completely unnecessary things they choose to do (fight over a ball wearing tights).

But damn do I love it.  Let me count the ways.

1. The game - it really is a big, fast chess match.  I truly get absorbed in the matchups, the schemes, and the constantly evolving game as players and coaches try to outsmart the other

   

   I know that you will blitz so I should max protect.  But I also know that you know I know you will blitz, so you won't blitz, so I should spread the field.  But I also know that you know I know *head explodes*

2. The ritual- November and December in New England can be pretty bleak, with the weak sun barely rising above the treetops in the southern sky.  It is a very comforting feeling to hit the couch, warmed on the outside by the stove and the inside by the whiskey, being entertained for 11 straight hours. 
3. The water cooler talk - Mondays used to be are terrible - just awful.  One of the rituals that got me through was recapping the game with colleagues, second guessing the critical calls and talking about that one spectacular catch.  I'm not sure if anyone has ever quantified the lost productivity on Monday mornings due to the NFL, but I bet it takes a couple hundredths off the GDP at least.
4. The skills - the athletes in the NFL are truly amazing and I admire the risk they take every game (they are, of course, more than amply compensated for this).  Watching them to their job is infinitely more interesting than me watching myself do my job. 
5. The media!  This is a HUGE part of it for me - I love reading about football, both from reputed writers and sketchy blogs.  I love reading Peter King's fifty thousand word rambling, pithy, often contradictory stories in his Monday Morning Quarterback for SI.  I love the Power Rankings and still remember Dr. Z.  I love reading the condescending douchebag Gregg Easterbrook in his Tuesday Morning Quarterback for ESPN, as he cherry picks his predictions to make himself look like a genius in a predictably haughty and transparent fashion.  I love (to hate) Bill Simmons and his tragically overused shtick.  I love Deadspin and Kissing Suzy Kolber.  Fucking PTI and Around the Horn.  Among my fondest traditions of the last four years was waking up unnecessarily early on weekend mornings and bringing my coffee into the office, sitting at the desk in front of the window overlooking the woods and catching up on the previous days NFL news and stories.  Didn't matter if it was the off season, SOMEONE (Pacman Jones) had gotten arrested for doing something hilarious and was being pilloried in the press.

   

   I LOVE to hate this abominable prick

6. The daydreaming.  I'm probably not alone in fantasizing that if circumstances were slightly different, I could have been an NFL star.  In my head, I skip the bizarre high school and college football culture, get signed to the Patriots practice squad out of my cubicle and shock the world with my grit.  I would be the short white version of Wes Welker.  Peter King would say I lead the league in scrappiness and pseudo Danny Woodheadishness.  Chris Berman would obnoxiously yell "KHAAAAAN!" when replaying my highlights.  I would win the Super Bowl on a 99 yard screen pass as time expired and Tom Brady would embrace me in a whirlwind of confetti.  And I would sub on defense, where I would sack Brett Farve so hard, that yes, maybe he does think he will retire for good, goddammit.
7. My team was good.  Lucky me.  I could have been born a Browns fan, and that shit is not funny.
8. Tom Fucking Brady

Those eyes.  That smile.  That little noise he makes when I nuzzle his neck.  He's a good quarterback.

This is some good stuff.  Plenty of reasons to like football.  Of course, this is not the whole story.  Because there is a flip side which will ultimately bring me to the point of this long blog, for the three of you that are still reading (Mom?  Dad? Keira?)

1. Time; it's not on my side.  I've been avoiding doing this calculation for years because it is not going to be pretty.  There are 17 weeks to the regular season where I might on average watch three games a week, or 51 games.  You can bet I watch every playoff game, and there are eleven of those including Super Bowl, so I watch about 62 games a year.  At about three hours per game, that is (gulp) 186 hours a year or 2418 hours for the past 13 seasons.  About one hundred DAYS!!!  That's a lot of time - an actual 2% of my life over the course of 13 years.  Sitting on my ass, staring at men wearing tights doing completely irrelevant things.
2. It's worse than that.  As non football fans are fond of pointing out, there is not actually much football that happens in a game.  Sure the game clock starts at 60 minutes and takes about three hours to get to zero, but on average there is a mere 12.5 minutes of actual action in a game.  So for all of that time spent watching, a mere 7% of it is the actual football that I love.  What is the rest....?
3. ....Fucking advertising.  As unbelievably stupid as it seems when looked at objectively, we idiot Americans pay through the nose for massive TV's and access to these games (or any other equally pointless programming) for the privilege of being constantly marketed at.  And if you think you just ignore the stuff, you don't because you have eaten at a fast food joint, bought a luxury vehicle, sucked down a poisonous sugary beverage, and probably been suckered into buying yet another Apple product.  I make no claim of being immune here - advertising works, and I am sure I have spent thousands on crap I do not need because I have been willing to plug myself into the corporate marketing machine.  And don't talk to me about DVR - watching a game after the fact is pointless, and there is progressively more advertising built right into the game which is completely unavoidable.  (I recently read Salt Sugar Fat - some terrifying stuff in here about just how effective and ruthless processed food marketing in particular is).
4. The machismo.  I have a big issue with the insecurity complex we collectively have as a society which expresses itself as gun worship and nationalistic 'our humans are better than your humans' bullshit in real life, and as tough talk and posturing in the NFL.  I really get sick of the 'my sack is bigger than your sack and that's why I made up this sack dance' crap.
5. Many players are douchebags.  Just as in the rest of the world, some of these dudes are just plain assholes.  It is unsettling to consider, but in a way any NFL fan is complicit in the crimes the players commit, from OJ Simpson to Barret Robbins to Michael Vick to Aaron Hernandez.  These people would not have their vast resources were it not for their pointless although entertaining skills that we are happy to pay to watch.

   

   This is true.  Ray Lewis participated in a murder, got off because successfully hid his suit covered in the victim's blood and spent the next decade getting fellated on TV by the media for being a 'great competitor' and using that money to pay off his victim's family.

6. I'm indirectly supporting college football.  College football is seriously fucked up, and it is described in much more eloquent detail than I could cover here.  And most of the games are unwatchable blowouts.
7. TV is TV. It really does make you dumber.  I've probably sacrificed an IQ point a year to the NFL, and I base that on no data.
8. And finally:

   

   No caption required

 So where does this all lead me?  Well, I have put myself in a position this season where I am basically unable to watch football.  I am on the once in a lifetime trip and it would be a shame to have missed this to indulge my guilty pleasure:

Me, missing the afternoon game

I was able to watch one game, the week 2 Monday night affair at a camp site lounge.  The game was a dreadfully sloppy tilt between the Steelers and the Bengals, and I probably would not have watched the whole thing if I was not joined by an amusing retiree named Big Al for the duration. 

I am making no predictions about my relationship with the NFL for the future.  This road trip will likely be wrapped up in time for the playoffs and there will be ample opportunities to watch the occasional game on this trip without missing out, say, this:

Sorry, Tom - my precious days in Glacier National Park are more important than watching you in week 3.

As I write this it is towards the end of the laziest day on this road trip so far, thanks to the steady downpour and the 40 degree temperature here in northern Montana.  We have a safe quiet camp site with good internet access, and I have greedily gorged myself on NFL stories and blogs for the past 24 hours.  But the forecast for the next few days is sunny and beautiful, and I will spare few thoughts for what is going on in pigskin land.  I will forgive myself for the opening weekend lack of mindfulness and expect it to be easier in the coming weeks.

While it is possible that I will cure myself of this strange addiction and will find myself with 2% more time to find ways to be more awesome instead of indulging in this cultural past time, I expect a middle ground is more likely - we anticipate a life without cable when we settle down again, meaning I will have to be social if I want to go watch a game.  Just making it a bit more inconvenient should drastically cut my NFL time, and at the end of my life I do not expect I will wish I had spent more of my life watching football. 

PS. Coach B - I'm still unsigned.  Your receiving corps is looking a bit thin.  Tom has my number.  Call me.
PPS.  Ah, Tom - your season passer rating is below such luminaries as Chad Henne and Andy Dalton.  Work on that mkay muffin?