If things were still as they were a quarter-century ago, we’d have had NFL games this holiday weekend, a three-day special to kick off the new season even as much of America broils and swelters through a summer that just won’t chill out.
The NFL played on Labor Day weekend — and the actual Monday holiday itself — for years, using it as a frequent campaign curtain-raiser from the time the league expanded to a 16-game schedule in 1978.
There were, as with any opening slate, performances that were mighty and memorable and others that were barely noticed at the time, let alone for posterity. Dan Marino threw a 5-touchdown, 473-yard epic for the Miami Dolphins against the New England Patriots in 1994. The thundering feet of Tennessee Titans star Eddie George gouged the then-Oakland Raiders for 216 rushing yards three years later.
Eventually, just a few months after we discovered the Y2K bug didn’t wreak catastrophe on civilization, the powers aloft decided to shift the calendar backward, extending the season deeper into the winter rather than encroaching upward toward toastier times.
Things were different then, even the NFL’s press releases. The one announcing the change quaintly hoped its supporters would spend the additional free weekend at “the beach, in the country or at a barbecue.” If such a thing happened today, they’d perhaps suggest more time to sit in air conditioning, play on our phones and binge-watch Netflix.
Or, if we’re being really productive, set up our fantasy rosters for the months that follow. In just three days Los Angeles Rams and the Buffalo Bills will perform commencement duties. Everything will be off and running again. Devoted fantasy players will be more likely to recite the relevant numbers of Samaje Perine and Laviska Shenault than their favorite uncle’s birthday.
Life alters. Schedules get worked around viewing habits. Sundays (and sometimes Mondays and Thursdays) take on a different dimension. For plenty of fans, the wardrobe oddly changes toward a strange preference for a single color.
If you are one of the millions who play fantasy, work productivity levels are about to get shifted, too. Of course, there are differing levels of interest and involvement, starting with family games where no one has a clue what’s going on, and a basic adherence to making sure you replace your QB on bye week is often enough to secure victory.
All the way to manic leagues where the waiver wire is scoured with hawkish eyes and sneaky Petes set alarms for unsociable hours to give themselves the best chance at acquiring an edge.
Baseball isn’t America’s pastime, not anymore. I’ve said this next bit before so if you’ve heard it previously apolog … no, congratulations, on being a loyal reader.
America’s passion is football. America’s pastime, overwhelmingly now, is fantasy football.
The obsession with fantasy is a reflection of the hold pro football has over American life. The grip is ironclad, and its prisoners have no wish to be freed.
Some sports are a diversion, football is an immersion. Like how the best true way to learn a language is to go to that country and be forced to speak it, our lexicons automatically change in ways we barely notice during the football months.
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Football isn’t something you watch, it is something to second-guess and agonize over. Being a football fan, most certainly, is not a stress-free experience.
Labor Day then, is the calm before the storm, which is an unapologetic cliché, because no time of year spouts clichés like football season. How many will we hear this year? Who knows? We’ll just have to take it one week at a time.
OK, enough frivolity. Football is coming. This is the last free day before something else takes over your life for the next five months. Make good use of it, in whatever way you like.
At the beach? In the countryside? At a barbecue, perhaps?
