The half-dozen or so of you who read my picks may have noticed that I have been silent this week. I didn’t make a pick for the Thursday night game, nor did I even bother to watch. You could hardly blame me, after the officials essentially decided three of the last four prime time games I watched. I’m not sure whether the Giants’ dismantling of the Panthers last Thursday helped or hindered the overall situation, but I sure did appreciate seeing a team take care of business themselves. (In the scenario I imagine, Eli Manning called a team meeting just before kickoff and said something along the lines of, “OK, let’s go out there and destroy these motherf**krs. There is no godd**m way I’m letting those dirty scab rent-a-f**ks f**k me in my motherf**king earhole!) (Whenever I fantasize about Eli Manning, he is generally extremely foul-mouthed. I should probably see someone about this.) Now, I know that the regular officials are back, but they’ve got to get up to speed with the pace of games that matter, without having had the benefit of officiating preseason games or the first three weeks of the season. Plus, they have the extra-added pressure of proving that they matter, that it was all worth it, and that they are not just an improvement over the replacements, but a vast improvement.
At any rate, the NFL owners and their commissioner wilfully put a substandard product on the field, disregarded their fan base, endangered their players, and tarnished the reputation of what was the best professional sports league in North America (at least), then left a group of unqualified scabs to take all the heat. And for what? A few extra bucks in their already overstuffed pockets.
So, I’m not doing any picks this week. I write about football because it enhances my enjoyment of the game, and because some of my friends have told me that they enjoy reading it. I don’t make money from this. Look around my pages, as well as the entire site. Have you noticed that there are no ads? My wife owns the domain, and we are beholding to no one.
I will probably watch some this weekend, to keep an eye on how things go. I can’t give up cold turkey. This is my favourite time of year; football season. Prime time games are out, for now; I’m not sacrificing any more sleep until I’m confident that the product is back up to its usual standards. The NFL has nothing to blame but itself; I have very high expectations, because I am used to high quality. When I am satisfied that the players and coaches are the ones deciding the outcomes of the games, as it should be, then I’ll start making picks again.