Let's not get too excited. Let's keep an even keel. Breathe. Breathe. Let's not get too excited. OK.
But let me tell you this: I am dang excited about this NFL season!
Jeez, my Cleveland Browns won a playoff game last year for the first time in 26 years and finally displayed competence. We Browns fans and even NFL pundits are more optimistic about Cleveland than ever. What could possibly go wrong?!?
Here's the deal: The NFL may embody what is best in America and what is worst in 'Merica all in one glorious/ridiculous sport that I watch each week.
Let's be positive and focus on what I find good about the NFL. I love the message of "hard work." I love that football is a blue-collar sport. I love that desire often trumps talent. And let's be honest: It's entertaining. Circus-like catches. Bone-crushing hits. Fourth and inches. Heck, yeah!
I'm actually cool with Browns QB Baker Mayfield and his style. I believe he isn't that good, but he busts his butt and doesn't seem to get injured. He ain't fancy and has average stats, but guess what? He's a winner.
Do you know what it's like for a Browns fan to actually like the quarterback? That's nearly impossible from what we've weathered. Decades and decades of incompetent QBs. I literally feel sick in my stomach whenever I hear the term "Johnny Manziel."
While I'm super excited about my Browns, I must say that the NFL may show what's wrong with our American culture, too. It's crazy violent, way too corporate and cruel to its workers. Sure, some players get paid mega-bucks, but at what price?
Football is brutal to bodies and heads, and quite frankly, football culture is patriarchal, militaristic and in some ways, racist and sexist. Toxic masculinity can be on display. And did we even mention concussions yet?
I would not encourage my son to play football, and at the end of the day, OK, if kids really want to play, I guess I support that. But it's such a violent sport, and we are such a violent country. I wonder why we glorify football so much.
Plus, 'Merica eats horribly, and I'm mentally preparing to see a zillion Domino's Pizza ads and chicken-shack crap as I watch games. Why do wings need to be wild? Free-range wings — that would make more sense. We'll eat nachos, drink soda and destroy our bodies as we watch players doing the same on the screen. Good times.
I often have considered elite sports a celebration of life, but with so much violence in the NFL and these so-called wild wings, is it really that?
But I am addicted. I can't not watch the Browns ... and play fantasy football ... and run a football pool. When the NFL is at its best, it brings people together. "You're a football fan? Great. That's all I need. We're cool."
It used to be "You're American? That's all I need. We're cool." Nowadays, as we all know, we got a whole bunch of low-level tribal division happening. I say the NFL is in a higher place than that junk. It sure beats cable news.
If it takes the NFL to bring us all together, I'll take it. Just, please, don't ever bring up Johnny Manziel.
