Football, Finally

I’ve been guilty more than once here over the last couple of months of grumbling about the relative paucity of televised sports entertainment. It’s my own fault, really. Imprisoned by my own tastes.

Sometimes the whining has come under the heading of pining for more poker on the teevee -- such as during the WSOP Main Event (which still hasn’t begun to be aired on ESPN and won’t start until Sunday). Definitely feel like there’s a valley here in the summer that poker could fill for a certain segment of sports watchers.

I realize there are sports to watch during the couple of months that follow the NBA finals. It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching the occasional tennis match, fourth round of a golf tournament, soccer match, or baseball game. Or even (this year) the panoply of Olympic sports from last month, which I spent some hours enjoying during the first week at least before taking off for Barcelona halfway through the sucker.

But for me the most enjoyable sport to watch on television is football, and I mean professional football. College is an okay diversion, but it ain’t nearly as engaging to me as the pro game.

This year begins uniquely for a Panthers fan like myself, given how Carolina gets to play in tonight’s Thursday kickoff game in a Super Bowl rematch versus the Denver Broncos. It’s not an ideal spot to begin a season -- on the road, on a short week, and versus an above average opponent. But it’ll give us all an early idea how bullish we should be on the team this time around.

Tonight’ll mark the first of 256 attempts at picking winners again as well as I jump back into another Pigskin Pick’em campaign. Hard to have much perspective with tonight’s pick, as we’re pretty well overwhelmed with unreasonable optimism regarding the Panthers around these parts. No Peyton for the Broncos (and an untested fellow in his place behind center) is encouraging many to go with Carolina as well, although I don’t necessarily think the QB situation will hurt Denver all that much.

Ah well... no more fussing over it. Time to make a pick. The second-guessing is just hours away!

Image: “Pigskin,” Eric Kilby. CC BY-SA 2.0.