I spent most of the past few days away from the computer. Upon my return, I discovered we're no longer in Suspension of Disbelief Season: we've entered Irrelevant Controversy Season!
Since there is no real news in the NFL, but we're all still desperate to talk and think about the NFL, some sportswriters use this month to give us pointless lists and rankings. These lists and rankings give us something to think about and argue about. People obviously react to these sorts of articles, and then they can write about them and argue about them. It's the creation of controversy.
So USA Today is ranking the best 25 NFL players of the last 25 years. Pete Prisco tells you what current players should make the Hall of Fame. Michael Silver ranks the NFL owners. But you already knew these things, didn't you? Because they gave you a chance to debate football, and they've already given a lot of football bloggers something to argue against. And the odds of more such articles in the next month are even better than the odds that half of America is going to spend Wednesday lined up to watch firetrucks and clowns move down the street at three miles per hour.
In the summer I'm usually excited to get into cantankerous arguments on pointless subjects: I'm far removed from the intellectual vitality and discourse of an academic semester, and the heat makes me cranky and mean-spirited. But right now, it exhausts me to think about going once more into the breach on irrelevant to semi-relevant football controversy like this. I'll just be following the publication of such articles from afar, and occasionally directing your attention to them. Because they do fill the necessary need we have to avoid our real lives and think about football during dreary July.
Training Camps aren't too far away.
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