What the End of the NFL Lockout Means - 4 Absolutes

The Lockout has ended!!  The Lockout has Ended!!  The Lockout has ended!!  The four words that have saved the rest of 2011 for many of us.  Who cares if the two sides will be fighting in a couple of years about the 18 game season and how to split the even larger pot than the $9 billion currently earned?  We have football back on Thursdays, Sundays, Mondays and the occasional Saturday this Fall.  Time to make fun of Rex Ryan again!  I'm esctatic, quite frankly.

Happy Days are here again!                 courtesy of paperbrief.com

Football in America has become something of a seventeen week holiday for many of us.  Parents and kids alike.  And with the return of Football, there are four absolutes that will again resurface this year - just like every year before it.

Absolute #1.  The Return of our Sojourns to Foxboro.  When I saw the Patriots lose to the Jets last year in the 2010 Playoffs, I was afraid that this was going to be the last game I saw in a long, long time.  No games missed though.  Now, I am going to go to my obligatory preseason game (so I can bring the boys to a more civilized pursuit than the sloppy fetes that are regular season games) and a couple of regular season games with the "guys".  There's nothing like watching football with a little chill in the air on sunny day after eating some brats and drinking some beers with friends.  Watching the parking guys and their payola.  Let the flags fly!  I'm sure LC will be going to more games than me this year, though. But if I don't have to rake leaves, I'm good.

Absolute #2.  The Return of the Favre Hole.  I was one of the early adopters of the whole "Brett Favre is a dink" mantra all those years ago.  But he will live on in my fantasy team, or some iteration of him will, at least.  Without NFL Football and by proxy fantasy football, I was going to miss having a bunch of macho guys act like a bunch of spurned prom-date girls because I wanted to trade players now for draft picks the following year.  Again, a couple of wasted hours a week trying to decide if I should start Ahmad Bradshaw over Maurice Jones Chapin-Carpenter beats raking the leaves or mowing the lawn any day.

Absolute #3.  The Degenerate Fifty Dollar Wagers.  My friend hates it when I show up at the club on Sunday afternoons.  He knows that I'm there either to play cards or to make these foolishly small bets.  See, if you are a good gambler, you bet a ton of money on one game.  $50 wagers on four or five games is called being a degenerate gambler.  And I'm enshrined in its Hall of Fame.  No one likes to see degenerate gambling and if you add in extreme emotion on top of that small little wager.  You have the makings of an asshole (or so I'm told.)  But if I can be a part of taking the woeful Cleveland Browns to cover the regular season champions the San Diego Chargers again, and live to scream about it, even better.

Absolute #4.  Activities from which I will be spared because of Absolutes #1-3 above.  Apple picking, autumn fairs and festivals, antique shopping, Christmas caroling, Dave and Bustering, shopping of any sort, corn festivals, apple picking, lawn cutting and leaf raking.

I'm giddy sitting here writing this.  We will have an autumn after all.  Welcome back NFL! I was starting to miss you.