Wild Card Weekend

Patrick Mahomes

I don't write much about football, for the simple reason I don't watch much football. Not anymore. When I was a teenager I loved it, and I continued to watch football on Sundays well until my forties. But this year I haven't watched one football game from beginning to end.

But, the odd things is, I still follow the game. I pay attention to who wins and loses and I actually know who is going to play this weekend. Whether I watch the games is another matter. I'll be working through the first game tomorrow, and I may rather be going to a movie then settling in front of a game  for which I have no stake in the outcome.

I got turned off football for many reasons. The violent nature of the game, the brushing aside reports on concussions, the "No Fun League" that micro-manages what players wear and how they celebrate, and the final straw was the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick. Add to that the team I root for, the Detroit Lions, haven't won a playoff game in almost thirty years.

So if I don't watch, I still know what's going on. The upcoming wild card weekend is an interesting mixture of teams, and I would be fine with any of them going all the way except for New England. So my favorite team will be whomever New England is playing. I suppose the ideal outcome would be a Kansas City-LA Rams Super Bowl, with the tantalizing prospect of a repeat of the Monday night game earlier this year which was, by all accounts, and judging by the 54-51 score, a classic. But both teams have a history of choking, especially Kansas City, which hasn't been to a Super Bowl in almost fifty years.

I will make my extremely uneducated guesses mostly on who is hot coming into the playoffs. I like Houston over Indy, Seattle over Dallas (I don't want Dallas to win, either, as I've always hated them, but like the Yankees, I've mellowed over the years), Baltimore over the Chargers (even though the Chargers are a great road team, they inevitably lose when they should win, no matter who the coach), and Chicago over Philly.

For the Super Bowl, I'll go with New Orleans over Baltimore, just to be different. Baltimore, unlike the choking dogs in LA and KC, seem to ride streaks and end up winning it all, which they've done twice.

But, like many indifferent fans, I'll root for a Rams-Chiefs Super Bowl, just so I can see Patrick Mahomes and Jared Goff light up the scoreboard. But I'm actually contemplating not watching the Super Bowl this year. Maybe I'll go out to a movie, the theaters should be empty.