Bye Bye Football
Yesterday evening I watched the final college football game of the season, with Alabama and Georgia contending for the national NCAA championship.
Next weekend the National Football League has scheduled six playoff games, all at different times. After many years they finally figured out that their product attracts more eyeballs when they spread the games out over three days. That suits me fine. I plan to watch them all.
My problem is not this week, but the week following February 13th. That is the day of the Super Bowl, and by 7:00 pm in Los Angeles that game will be over, and with it football — finished until August. What am I going to do for entertainment during the spring and summer? I find baseball boring, and the Los Angeles Lakers are having a mediocre season.
I’d like to say that I’ll turn to writing, but I have made that promise to myself many times before. I write this blog every week because I have a deadline and I am motivated by deadlines.
I am likely, instead, to turn to my entertainment of last resort – reading books. My biggest challenge with reading, however, is that I can’t do anything else at the same time. I have to pay complete attention to the book. By contrast, when I watch (or half-watch) football, I can play a game of solitaire on my iPhone or have a conversation with Daveen. But reading a book is like driving a car. When I’m the driver I have to pay full attention. Fortunately, Daveen loves to drive, and when I’m a passenger I can allow myself the luxury of distraction.
I always look on the bright side. Thanks to COVID-19 we‘ve had an unusual opportunity. Our typical entertainments – parties, eating in restaurants, or seeing movies in theaters – are mostly off the table (pun intended) for a while. So each of us gets to fill in the blank spaces of our lives in a different way.
Most of us are resilient. If something (such as COVID-19) is inevitable, we can embrace it, or in this case, embrace avoiding it.
It has been an opportunity, if not to get to know each other better, to at least get to know ourselves better.
And oh, the stories that will be told about the Plague of 2020-2022. But if this is a once in a hundred year experience, I’m glad I won’t be around for the next one.
Alan