Reality Football

The high water mark of the football season has come and gone. The "national championship game" for college has been played, along with the wild card and divisional rounds of the NFL playoffs. We have gone from having four or five games each weekend to just two. Then it will be just one. And we'll go back to talking about what was and what will be. The present exists for just two teams now, and everything else is just that: talk.
As soon as the final gun sounded on the New Orleans Saints, the Denver Broncos, the Houston Texans and the Green Bay Packers, the discussions and speculations began. How could anything short of a Super Bowl title be considered a success? All four of these teams were winners of their respective divisions, and had obviously managed to win at least enough games to make it to the tournament. Success, it seems, is relative. The Packers lost only one game in the regular season. As a result, they got the week off to rest and prepare for their game. It didn't help. Now the world wants to know what happened. Was it lack of preparation? Too many distractions? What about the Broncos? What happened to God's favorite quarterback? Never mind the surprise and joy generated by the previous week's win, along with the rest of a series of improbable highlights. Losing that last game is what everyone talks about.
Here in Oakland, the son of Al Davis, young Mark has taken the reins of the the Raiders and started heading in his own direction. New General Manager. New coach. Maybe even a new city. Professional football is, after all, a business. Winning a Super Bowl is a great way to make more money. For about fifteen minutes during this past season there was some wild talk about the Raiders and the Forty-Niners meeting up at the end of the year to play for all the marbles. What a boon for the cash-strapped Bay Area. Half of that equation can still come to pass, but the east side of the bay will have to sit by and wait another year. All those surprises like Detroit and Buffalo are now part of a scrapbook to be put on a shelf, like the lineup of my Fantasy Team. The daily importance of these players, coaches and organizations will diminish as the winter drags on and the spring turns to summer. The Super Bowl, with all its attendant hoopla will come and go, leaving the football fans among us to search for other topics to discuss with friends and family. It's just a game, after all. A very expensive, high pressure, high expectation spectacle of a game. And somebody's going to lose that one too.