Speaking of never learning …

I have a client of sorts, someone for whom I perform useful tasks. Since I am retired I don’t bill him, but every now and then he will send me a check. Recently he sent me $350, and I regarded it as found, or mad money. What to do with it?

We do not have cable and so do not have access to most professional football games. That’s OK by me as I stopped being a football fan back in the early 1990s. I was appointed “commissioner”  of a fantasy league and so had to keep track of the stats. I could have just downloaded them off the infant Internet, but doing that meant that I had to abide by rules I did not like. Our league had its own rules, such as a waiver wire and bonuses for things like a 300 yard passing game etc.

So every Monday morning I pored over newspaper statistics from the Sunday games, very tedious work, and then brought the whole league up to speed by dropping off a stack of stats and standings sheets at the Drifters Tavern. That was half of my work day.

I had only joined the league the previous season as a lark, and by lottery drew the right of first choice in the player draft, and so naturally chose Joe Montana, who, naturally, got injured early on. Later in the year I became “commissioner” of the league because the guy in charge was grifting.

One full season of being commissioner was all I could handle. I was burned out. Not only the tedium, but the idea that as a non-drinker married to a drinker, I often found myself sitting through games at the Drifters, so boring! I didn’t care about any  but one team, the Green Bay Packers. They were not very good then, and rarely got on TV unless they played Denver. But try sipping on a coke and sitting through a three hour game some time, two teams you don’t care about. Such tedium can lead to divorce!

Beyond that, rooting for certain players and not for teams ruined football too. I had enough. I quit as commissioner, divorced my then wife, and never looked again at a football game until my current wife and I moved to Colorado. At first I had no interest in the Broncos, but this whole area is saturated with Bronco madness, even when they are bad, as they have been for years. And still are. But as I drive around this area I turn on local sports channels, and slowly began to become a fanboy. I have even suggested that people here sport bumper stickers once seen in Atlanta, “Bring professional football to Denver.”

The point of this essay? I did something stupid, and not saying “I love you” as Frank and Nancy did, the incest song. I decided to use that money to purchase NFL Sunday Ticket, thinking it would buy me full access to Bronco games, along with the Packers. Problems arose …

1. Blackouts. Here in Denver and surrounds, the Broncos are blacked out of NFLST. The only way to see them that I know of is on FUBO and on free TV, which we do not have. The first week I looked over the games, four games of interest were blacked out, two of them the Raiders/Broncos and Packers/Bears. The NFL uses funny language to sell this product, so that buyers are not aware that the NFL is far stricter than other sports about blackouts.

2. No refunds. NFL makes that clear, no money back, ever. Also, you have to opt out for next season or they will suck you in again.

3. Centurylink. Our television is strictly Internet based, and when demand is high, we get that revolving arrow in the middle of the screen. Yesterday it was so often as to be unwatchable.

4. I still don’t care about any teams but two, Packers and Broncos. What the hell was I thinking?

5. And, oh yeah – I was watching a documentary about Kirk Cousins, the Minnesota Vikings quarterback. They say he pulled off the greatest comeback in NFL history. What was the deficit he overcame? 33-0. Did I forget to mention, football is rigged?

I am a wee bit old to be saying “live and learn,” but this has been a learning experience. I am out $400, and I don’t like football very much anyway, as the advertising is the only reason for the broadcasts, and the ads are plentiful, entire games built around them. Now and then a player will be injured on the field, and they use that opportunity to cut away for ads! Tell me that is not planned. The player always returns to action unless carted off on a stretcher.

I had fun watching the Avalanche win two years ago, and pay no attention to basketball, so the Nuggets do not matter to me. The Rockies, whom I seriously do not care about, are usually bad, but still fill up the stadium. This area is a sports mecca.

For me, not so much. I thought I would like NFL football. Turns out not.