Recently l was devouring breakfast (imagine that) at my favorite local spot with a guy l attended high school with.
He reminded me the start of 2023 National Football League season is just around the corner with training camps now open.
l nearly choked on my biscuit when my friend stated this and simply offered the perspective that very few Football fans in this country recognize anymore.
The NFL never left after the Super Bowl as the 800-pound gorilla that it has become simply hangs around, popping up on your television twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Think about it, the day after Kansas City defeated Philadelphia for all the marbles, the proliferation of Super Bowl highlights shows were unleashed on those who apparently can’t get enough, and with the prowess in which l attacked my bountiful breakfast, fans gobbled it up and quickly sought another helping.
The very next day between the numerous shows such as “NFL Live” and “This Week in Pro Football” that followed the big game in the which they simply regurgitate the highlights of the Super Bowl we just watched, came an unprecedented number of commercials giving you instructions on how to purchase the official championship hat and t-shirts that the Chiefs donned during the lengthy post-game celebration, which was brilliantly staged to never end as well.
Before your Super Bowl hangover could even begin, they began to promote the NFL Scouting Combine which long ago exploded into a week-long television extravaganza, one that chronicles which future star can run the quickest and jump the highest in a true love fest held right here in Lucas Oil Stadium.
If that doesn’t wet your appetite enough then there is the Grand Daddy of hype known as the NFL Draft, where you “finally” learn who your team will snag with their picks to join the veterans on the roster for mini training camps, which of course supersede the official training camp, and a handful of meaningless preseason games that are gobbled up by both the local television affiliates as well as the League’s regular season television partners accordingly.
The point of this never-ending rant is the NFL truly never leaves, and that’s both brilliant and pathetic from a marking perspective, and that suits most fans just fine. Those same fans buy billions of dollars worth of official merchandise in addition to filling stadiums each game, so yeah l guess it’s great to be the NFL now of days as they continue to print more money than the Federal Reserve.
Clearly l don’t understand the infatuation their fans have for the product that is professional Football but that doesn’t matter.
For every person that scratches their head about it, there’s a million folks out there that love it and simply can’t get enough.
It’s only going to get bigger, and as many will swear better, so perhaps l should commend them for providing a respite for people who work hard all week and allocate a number of their hard-earned dollars to their balance sheet. That’s probably only fair but that aside, just don’t refer to the off-season anymore as that doesn’t exist, and that’s a fact.
Danny Bridges who as an insomniac once watched highlights from a previous Super Bowl to help himself fall asleep, can be reached at (317) 370-8447 or at bridgeshd@aol.com.
