Memo To NFL: You’re Detoxing Your Fans
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s how I feel about the state of the NFL about now. Every day that goes by the NFL draft fades into the rearview mirror a little bit more. I resist, I don’t want to move past the draft because when I do there is big fat void waiting for me. I hunger for any new tidbit of information on one of our nine new players. I search out any possible draft grade or evaluation that I may not have seen yet. When they talk about the CBA on sports radio or ESPN I change the channel or station. I’m one step away from putting my fingers in my ears and yelling “La La La La La” like my five year old when he doesn’t want to hear me telling him its bed time. I’ve really enjoyed the last two weeks. I could be a football fan, no check that, football addict again. The draft made me feel like my old Chiefs Addict self again. It felt good. Then I started writing a piece about what possible holes we still need to fill through free agency. I’ve given up on it for the time being because I got so annoyed by the fact that I don’t even know the status of a quarter of our roster.
We put the franchise tag on Tamba Hali.
What if there isn’t a franchise tag in the new CBA?
We put tenders on players like Brandon Carr and Wallace Gilberry.
Will that even mean anything after a new deal is reached?
Depending on what the new CBA looks like regarding free agency we still don’t know who will be restricted or unrestricted free agents. We don’t even know if there will be both restricted and unrestricted free agents.
Will we be so busy making sure the guys that have been on our roster don’t go anywhere that we miss out on any big time player additions?
It’s infuriating!
The truth is we don’t have any idea. We don’t have any idea what the answers are or even when we may start to get those answers and it tickith me offith.
Warning: There is no profound conclusion to this rant after the break that will make you feel any better about the state of the NFL, just a very frustrated fan, check that, addict, speaking his mind. Continue reading at your own risk.
If you are like me and enjoy torturing yourself, you have probably looked up last year’s Chiefs offseason schedule and found that if we use last year’s timeline OTAs should be starting this coming Monday. We should be a week away from seeing our 2011 Chiefs come together for the first time.
Kind of makes you twitch a little, doesn’t it?
I’ve already admitted that I’m a Chiefs football addict. Well the draft was my last “fix” and now the NFL is holding the goods. I saw the movie “The Fighter” for the first time this weekend (good flick, by the way). There is a scene in the movie where Christian Bale’s character goes to prison after being a hardcore crack head for years. It shows him in his cell sweating, itching, writhing in pain, detoxing against his own will. With the draft over, that is what the NFL is doing to all of us football addicts. The difference is that we aren’t in prison. Bale’s character was locked in a cell where he couldn’t do anything about it. Unfortunately for anyone related to the current labor mess, we NFL fans are not locked up.
Think about it, when is an addict dangerous? The answer is when they REALLY need a fix. If Roger Goodell thinks the booing he got at the draft was bad, has he got something coming. Those boos came from a bunch of addicts who know that their fix may get cut off, but who aren’t actually going through withdraw yet. The more time that passes and the more football fans start to miss their NFL fix, the uglier things are going to get.
You know what I say? Good.
Take this analogy a step further. The NFL has created a product so good that it is like crack to us diehard fans. The NFL in this analogy is the drug lord/drug dealer. The lockout is the equivalent of all the drug dealers and manufacturers just up and stopping all drug deals. No sales, no fixes, and a lot of very crazed addicts.
If this thing carries on through the summer I hope Roger Goodell, DeMaurice Smith, and anyone else associated with the CBA mess can’t leave their homes without getting heckled. Do I personally think the owners are to blame? Yes. However, this whole courtroom drama is convincing me that as long as either side thinks they just can wait out the legal system as long as they need to get the upper hand we are going to be waiting a VERY long time. So I hope that as addicts all over go into withdraw they put pressure on all sides.
Get to the table!
Get a deal ironed out!
Give us OUR football!
You all helped to give us this great product that we are buying up like no other in the history of our country and all we ask of you is to just keep selling us the product.
Otherwise they are going to have an entire country of very angry, very desperate addicts that will care less and less about who’s right and who’s wrong. Or worse, maybe we all make it through detox and decide we don’t want to use anymore. Or maybe we’ll just shift our addiction. After all, the Royals are finally starting to look promising, right?
As always, thanks for reading and GO CHIEFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!