Relatively speaking...

****danger, danger****
this post probably won't contain much, if anything, about running. feel free to click the 'back' button now.....
why can't i relate? to what? to much, actually.
football season is rearing it's ugly, much over-hyped head, and this means that the talk around town often turns to 'who do you think will win the game?'.
more often than not, my inner reply is, "what? there's a game today? oh, right, it is the weekend again, and that means that we all should give to sh!t$ about whatever big game is being played. like i care."
my outer reply, though, is more like, "i am not sure. i usually just root for the offense when i watch." which, as you might expect, earns me some blank stares. As I intend, though, it usually stops the conversation right there. dead in its tracks. perfect. moving along now.
i cannot relate to football. i know the rules. i understand the game play. i don't understand the hows and why's of each position, and can only be counted on to identify the following positions with relative accuracy: QB, kicker, punter, center, and wide receiver.  i know the difference between off sides and encroachment, but cannot tell you what 'illegal man downfield' means. when i was younger, my friends and i would talk about football players. sure we would. those were the days of Roger Staubach, Fran Tarkenton, Lynn Swan, and that QB turned announcer from the Steelers....oh yea! Terry Bradshaw. Coaches like Tom Landry were the norm, and yelling, screaming coaches hadn't (de)evolved yet.
At home, we wouldn't gather around the snowy tele and watch the game, yelling and screaming at the magic box. we might catch the tail end of a game while waiting for 60 Minutes to come on, but we'd generally find something ELSE to do. My highschool didn't have a football team. Neither did any other schools for about 50 miles. Maybe more. We played soccer (which, incidently, is known as 'football' by every country in the world except for America). Do i watch it now, like other by-gone football players watch football now? No, i don't. I can say that i have more respect for the FIFA World Cup than i do for the Baseball World Series. Why? Let's examine.....one word sticks out in my mind. "WORLD". that's right. the soccer version actually has OTHER COUNTRIES involved. Teams from around the PLANET are able to compete. not in baseball. just the US. (oh, and one or two miscellaneous Canadian teams. Sorry, eh.) But I digress. A lot.
The silver cloud surrounding football comes at the end of the season. No, not THE end of the season (that's the pot of GOLD). The lining is that the playoffs and championship games are ONE AND DONE, not a dragged out, painful best of 10,000 series. You lose, you get to play golf the next day. Or beat someone up, or bet on dog fights, or whatever they do. Maybe some of them should give the University of Phoenix a call. Whatever.
So this will be my last rant about football. Next up, the Final Four. Remember when colleges were about actually EDUCATING people?