A Sunday without football is almost not a Sunday at all. Oh, sure, the sun comes up. You have your coffee. Maybe even a little treat, like orange rolls fresh from the oven.
But there’s no pre-game shows. No GameDay Morning. No Rich Eisen and Steve Mariucci. No hours and hours of football talk about the same four teams, none of which are ever the Bengals.
The Super Bowl is next week, so it’s not quite over, but the season is drawing to a close and in my house, we’re already leaning into that sad, sports limbo period between the end of the NFL season and the date when pitchers and catcher report to spring training. February is the worst month, and this is partly why. The loss of football would be much easier to take if it were actually warm enough to be outside, but it appears that won’t be happening in Indiana for a very long time.
It’s true that all kinds of possibilities for the weekend open up when your Sundays are free. We could go somewhere. Leave the house. Put on real clothes. Do something productive. Bleh.
There’s something to be said for rituals. For knowing exactly how the day will unfold. A couple of beers. A nap at half-time. The Sunday night game.
The Sunday night shows are our only hope of making it to mid-February, and Downton Abbey isn’t off to a good start. There’s still hope with Sherlock and True Detective. But what about the rest of the day? Can’t someone put together a pre-show show? I’d watch four hours of Benedict Cumberbatch and Matthew McConaughey talking in great detail about every nuance of this week’s episode. Oh, let’s be honest. I’d watch them talking for four hours about anything. Please someone make that happen.
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