Why I Started Following Football Again

 

I don't think I need to clarify when I say that 2020 has been a soul-crushingly awful year. 

It's been a year of many adjustments. A lot of dormancy. A lot of things being changed around and altered and made frustratingly off. Sports has mostly remained intact, but the way we as a public absorb sports, especially now, has changed. No more bar gatherings, no more friends huddled around a couch, just...sitting at home, watching solo. 

And once the MLB season ended, and NFL was the only sport around...with not much else to exert time and attention to, I started watching football again.

I'll make it clear that I was always a passing Eagles and Packers fan, even when I wasn't absolutely watching games, but in college, and in the last few years, I would just walk into a room, see a score, and walk out. I didn't follow games, I didn't keep track of who was good for whom, and most of all I stopped collecting football cards because I barely knew anybody in them. Obviously I was excited when my hometown Eagles won a Super Bowl in 2018, but that was the extent of it. Patriots-Falcons in 2017 was odd because I couldn't name most of the highlights on Atlanta that weren't named Ryan or Jones. 

The one key variable this year on Sundays was that my dad was home for them. With his NFL-related job, he's usually traveling Sundays, on location Mondays, home Tuesdays. So it'd be a rarity if I ever got to truly watch NFL games with him. But, this year he obviously wasn't doing much flying, and he got to be home with the remote usually tuned to RedZone on Sundays, and so I was there with him. Even if my teams weren't on til 4, I'd take it in, and I'd see who was surging, who was relevant, and how the game was looking.

This not only restored the usually-active pastime of watching football between a father and son to my household, but it got me back into football. Yes, the Packers were winning and the Eagles had to start Jalen Hurts in order to win themselves, but the Steelers were cruising on an easy schedule, the Pats were on the cusp of a losing season, the Cardinals, Seahawks and Rams were wrestling for dominance and the Cleveland Browns were better than they'd been since 1994. A lot to keep track of, but a lot to enjoy.

With this in mind, I got to making some of my first football customs since 2014. I made 32 to start, one for each team, starting with Pittsburgh's rookie standout Chase Claypool, and will attempt to pepper them throughout the next two months, despite finishing up Year by Year for the rest of this one. My goal is to not have many leftovers by the time the football season ends, and get all of these, plus subsequent playoff ones, out of my system. 

I dunno if this is gonna eventually lead to me collecting football cards, cause I already have enough to collect already, but this is a nice distraction in a year where I've needed several.