Where Only Modesty Chuckles

Not that anyone noticed, but I've been making quite a beechwood-aged stink about my NFL boycott. And I still have to say, at the most strenuous levels of anguish and reward, I hate that shit. Over the week or so, however, several things have transpired to pull me, ever so coyly, back into that sport's doughy folds.

-The demise of the FD fantasy football league: It was the symbolic divorce I needed, but it also gave me room to just watch the damn game (as on Thursday). Then again, I immediately regretted not having any point totals to keep sluicing about it my head.

-Ufford's first Prelude column: Like someone handed me the keys to guilt-free, drab-free NFL fandom.

-The pain I feel today: For reasons whose pivot is beyond anyone's control, I have to shut myself in this afternoon and write something. Since my new t.v. hasn't yet arrived, that means I'll be excluded from the year's first Tomlinson mega-epic. I know that he might not exactly shred up Chicago, but there's very little in sports that makes me raise hands skyward like that man. Also the Seahawks start at the same time, which ruled out wading through a bar. I hate bars, especially those clumped with homers, especially today.

So anyway, in the interest of truth, reconciliation, and my not feeling like I'm totally missing out today, I hereby commence the first ever (of any kind) FreeDarko open thread. It will be about football, and it might fail miserably. But it would make this poor brewer's day if he could have some sort of like-minded companionship as he rediscovers the sport he never really knew.