Hasten the Slow Decay

Ah, the offseason is upon us.

Fear not! Fuhbaw plans to attack this (not so) long national nightmare with a vengeance... much like last year.

Free agency, the draft, the looming labor crisis... training camp will be here before you know it.

I'm coming to think football is a cyclical thing, not in the year-to-year sense, the waxing and waning of dynasties, the balance between the conferences... I'm not talking about that.

Rather the season's intensity is underscored by its long absence. The harsh reality of football is over. Now is the necessary renewal of hope.

Yes, hope even for Lions fans. Chris at Smart Football is offering words of cautious optimism about Jim Schwartz, which if you read Smart Football regularly words of cautious optimism equate roughly to a teenage girl hopping up and down, screaming "Oh My God!" over and over again.

Players will heal their wounds, rest tired bodies. Coaches will tear apart game plans, re-fashion systems and teachings. General managers will poke and prod fresh-faced kids like cattle, run a weary eye over crusty veterans. Owners will fret over gates, squeeze what they can.

And, we the fans, will begin to believe again that our team can win it all... maybe not this year, fans of Chiefs or Lions will say. But that far flung hope persists.

Never mind that 16 weeks of nagging injuries, last-second heartache, muddy uniforms, myopic playcalling, etc, etc should tell us different (well, unless you're a Steelers fan). In some compacted version of the American dream, at some point, we will all feel like our team has a chance. (And like the American dream, some will never attain it.)

So as you long for football in the thawing late Winter or warming Spring, tell yourself that the game wouldn't be nearly as good without this long goodbye. Tell yourself we'd have futbol, not fuhbaw. Tell yourself college basketball and Wimbledon will do. Tell yourself... Yeah, I'm not buying it either.