If There's No Football This Year, You'll Be Fine
I’m fairly confident there will be football this year. The NFL loves money above all things, and not having football means losing money. But if they are put in a position where they are forced to cancel the season, there will no doubt be an outcry of brokenhearted fans who, for the first year in their lives, will have zero games of NFL football to look forward to.
There’s already been a lot of talk about “needing” sports. A lot of miserable-funny tweets about exhausting all other interests within the first two months of no sports and begging for their return.
I get it. Sports are important. Sports are like art or festivals or clubs or shaming the guy who keeps running around the promenade naked. Anything that ties a community together can be vital.
But if you lose sports for a year, trust me. You’ll be fine.
All we really need is, like, a hut made of sticks, some water, and a small garden of potatoes. If you had those three things you could live for a very long time. It wouldn’t be a particularly happy time, but that’s only because you know there are toilets, milkshakes, and french fries. If I wiped your memory and stuck you in your water-and-potato stick hut, you’d be perfectly content.
But, guess what? If you’re reading this, you have a lot more than water, potatoes, and a stick hut. At the absolute bare minimum, you have water, potatoes, a stick hut, and a device with internet access. But most of you have a house or an apartment and many, many things inside that house or apartment that you’ve spent years accumulating to augment your existence in enjoyable ways.
If there is no football, you can use these things more than you already do! You can even use the things you bought and have never used because only bought them to create the appearance that you use them.
Watch movies you’ve never watched before. Legitimately everyone who has said they’ve watched “all of Netflix” during the pandemic is lying. You’ve watched, like, three movies and maybe two full TV series and all of them were things you’ve already watched 15 times. Watch a bunch of stuff you’ve never watched before. Watch stuff you’ve never even heard of before. One of the greatest joys in life is stumbling into a great obscure movie and being able to recommend it to your friends so they know what a fancy, cultured little snob you are.
Go for a bunch of walks. I don’t own a car. I walk like five miles to work every day, even in the winter. I’ve done this for the last seven years. Once you make it a part of your daily routine, long walks feel very good, though your legs will always be a little sore. But everyone you know will be like “How do you walk so much? I could never do that.” and you can be like “It’s no big deal.”
Become a hot sauce person. I’ve done this recently. I was never a hot sauce person, but now I am. I get very flavorful hot sauces and hurt myself with them. It’s a lot of fun and I sweat a lot. More than usual. I highly recommend it.
Meditate. I don’t even mean this in any sort of fancy spiritual way. Just sit there for a while and don’t actively think of anything. Just let your brain do whatever it wants to. I do this all the time, almost daily. Literally sit there and do absolutely nothing for as long as you can. Then you can casually slip into conversations that you meditate and you’ll sound super cool and like you’ve grown a lot during these difficult times.
Read books. This one is for if you get really desperate. I don’t think I’ve read a book cover-to-cover that’s over 150 pages long since high school. But if you have to turn to books, I've heard the good ones are good for you.
Those are just five things you could do! There are so many more. Many of them will allow you to show your friends how much better you are than them, which is, of course, the point of having friends.
I know none of it probably seems as fun as football, especially when the Chiefs are probably going to win another Super Bowl if they play this year. It’s going to be really, really lame if a virus derails the beginnings of a Chiefs dynasty. Very much not-good, but is what it is.
But it’ll be okay. As difficult as it might be to recall, you haven’t always needed football to survive. You used to be a dumb baby. You probably still are a dumb baby, you just poop your pants a little less often. Just like you already know death, you already know what life without a ball-sport is like.
If you absolutely need football, though, you can always get a small group of friends together and just go play it. I can nearly guarantee there’s an abandoned field somewhere near you that is perfect for pandemic pickup football. I hit a walk-off grand slam off my brother's girlfriend in a game a wiffleball last week, and it felt almost as satisfying as when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. It doesn't matter how insignificant the game is, winning feels good and losing feels bad. So go attempt some no-look passes in the empty lot behind the old K-Mart or something.
