This past weekend might have been the last that we have to endure with no football. With the tragedy of no games this fall avoided, I’ve decided to look into the future to see what a Sunday without football would have done to the average American man.
Hope you enjoy the, What Could Have Been? Edition of the Weekend Recap.
9:00 am – Wake up Sunday to no text messages talking shit about the fact that you are starting Matt Hassleback in your fantasy football league. There are no reports of injuries flooding your inbox, so instead of jumping to the computer to adjust your starters, you have sex with your girlfriend.
9:04 am – Sheepishly roll out of bed and offer to go get your unsatisfied girlfriend some bagels.
9:45 am – Get back to your apartment, plop down on your coach, and turn on ESPN to engross yourself in three hours of pre game coverage, only to find that they are showing the National Cheerleading Competition, from 2009.
10:00 am – Try and coax your girlfriend back into bed, so you can use the ‘motivation’ that you got from watching seventeen year old girls jumping up and down.
10:02 am – Abandon the cause when you see that she is already looking in a Time Out New York to find something ‘fun and free’ for both of you to do today.
11:00 am – Back to the coach, and the cheerleaders, as you’re waiting for your girlfriend to finish getting ready so you can travel to the Botanical Gardens, Flea Market, or Art Museum.
11:03 am – You get scolded for entering the bathroom to see if she’s ready.
11:35 am – Leave the apartment in silence after getting into an argument about you not being excited to spend the day with her, staring at flowers, fleas, or paintings.
12:00 pm – Arrive at the Gardens, Market, ect. and find dozens of other men with the same hangdog expression, all walking a few steps behind their girlfriends, who all look just as angry as yours does.
12:45 pm – After sneaking off to the bathroom, you find a group of men huddled around a smart phone. They are watching Marshawn Lynch’s game clinching run against the Saints last year. You can hear the frenetic tone to the play by play and close your eyes. You don’t need to watch. Every cut, every stiff arm is engrained in your memory. As you wash your hands, you notice the guy next you wiping tears from his eyes. You make eye contact in the mirror, and nod grimly as you pat him gently on the shoulder.
1:30 pm – After lunch your girlfriend seems to be warming up to you. She is holding your hand, chatting happily away about azaleas, and even smiling on occasion.
1:35 pm – Girlfriend receives a phone call from a distressed friend, whose boyfriend decided to stay home and watch archived NFL games, instead of accompanying her to a matinee of the silent film she had been dying to see.
1:39 pm – Girlfriend explains that some guys are jerks and the friend should let her boyfriend know that his behavior is unacceptable. Then gets off the phone, complains about the male race as if there weren’t a card carrying member standing right there, and looks to you for an opinion.
1:41 pm – You realize that asking, “Well, what game was it?” was not the response she was looking for, and retake your place a few steps behind her as she stomps to the exit.
2:00 pm – Girlfriend is forced to repeat herself, twice, because you were trying to eavesdrop on a debate that the two guys next to you on the subway are waging over Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson. Then you mistakenly say “Arian Foster” when she demands a response to her question.
2:30 pm – Girlfriend heads directly for her room and slams the door.
2:45 pm – You decide to give her some space and let her calm down. This is clearly the wrong decision as she texts as soon as you are outside wondering, where the hell you are going?
2:46 pm – It starts to rain, so you go back inside.
2:57 pm – You make your a girlfriend sandwich and bring it into the bedroom. She scowls at you over a copy of Elle Magazine until she realizes that you have brought a peace offering.
3:00 pm – Your peace offering had mayonnaise, which she hates, and this spurs an hour long argument about how you never listen to her.
4:01 pm – You’re caught looking at the clock.
4:03 pm – You’re cleaning up turkey, cheese, and mayonnaise off of the floor.
4:10 pm – You’re girlfriend finishes cleaning up because you can’t even do that right.
4:15 pm – You apologize.
4:16 pm – She accepts and you reconcile, twice.
5:30 pm – After a nap, you sneak out of bed and go to the store to buy food to make dinner.
6:45 pm – You sit down to eat. The apartment is the most peaceful it has been all day.
7:00 pm – Your girlfriend asks why you were so distracted today.
7:02 pm – After weighing a few potential options, you decide to tell her the truth.
“My brain is wired to think about football all the time. By spending an entire day, usually Sunday, absorbed in watching, analyzing, and bitching about the game, my brain gets emptied of all the excess football stuff that builds up in there over the week. If it doesn’t get a chance to get emptied, it gets clogged up. Think of it like an overflowing trash can. Things get stuffed in there until you can’t get a scrap of paper in their without it falling on the ground. That trash can is my brain, and Sunday is the day that it usually gets emptied. With the stupid cock gobbling lockout, there has been no one to take the trash out, so now things that would normally stay, like how you hate mayo, are ending up on the floor, instead of in the can where they belong.”
7:05 pm – She gets up from the table, and dumps her half eaten dinner in the trash. “So the things that I say, the things that are important to me, are like trash to you? That’s fucking great.”
7:06 pm – You realize that football, despite being blamed for distracting guys and making them act like morons, actually plays a critical role in keeping your relationship running smoothly. It’s like a mental oil change, and because of the lockout you are thousands of miles overdue.
11:00 pm – You wake up on the coach with your girlfriend’s dog licking your face. It’ll be the only action you’re getting tonight.
Thankfully the lockout is almost over, and this bleak, completely unrealistic future, will never come to fruition.
—–Corey