Dawg Pound, December 5, 2005.
Let’s start here: when it comes to sports, baseball was my first love. For a long time, I knew baseball backwards and forwards. I knew stats from countless summer days, and I mean whole days sometimes, spent watching baseball games and sorting baseball cards so that they could be properly cross-referenced by both team and player. One of my first major purchases upon reaching gainful employment was a set of Angels season tickets. To this day, I have a really hard time believing I will ever spend $300 more wisely than I did the night of October 27, 2002 for a ticket in the top row of Angel Stadium to watch Darin Erstad camp under a ball in right center and Troy Percival turn to Bengie Molina for the Championship Moment.
So, why FootballSickness.com? Simple. If baseball was my first love, football is my sports soul mate. For me, it’s the perfect storm of converging interests. I love the game, I love the business of the game, and I love the lessons one can learn, teach, re-affirm or discover through the game. The obvious physicality is appealing, but it is also by far the most complex and intellectually challenging of the major sports. Success in football comes easily to no man and no team. Peyton Manning is immensely gifted and one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, but his first year was downright ugly. The Saints were a league laughingstock for…well, roughly forever. Only after four years of strong leadership, incredibly hard work, intelligent decision-making and a little luck were they able to reach the promised land (proving yet again that we Browns fans need only keep hope alive).
Anyway, I’ve been watching football for as long as I can remember. A lot of football. Legit football. Despite the reputation for being a laid-back surf town, my hometown of Huntington Beach, California is actually a relative football hotbed. When I was a kid, attendance demands required my high school’s rivalry game be played at the Big A (then home to both the Angels and Rams). Edison v. Fountain Valley was a national event back then. My best friend in high school was a star high school player and All-American guard at Arizona State, and is now a high school coach, so I’ve learned a lot simply by being around him. I’ve always reserved Sundays and Monday evenings in the fall for the NFL. The moment I realized I could finally afford the NFL Sunday Ticket was one of the top 5 in my life as a sports fan.
The point is that I’ve spent a lot of time coming to the following conclusion: Football is important. Not just to me, and not just to millions of fans, but to the American way of life. While fans in all sports come together, the sense of community created among football fans is tangibly different and, I would argue, more powerful. Cities shut down on game day. Whole states travel to their primary university’s away games in all corners of the country. In small towns all over the United States, the glare of the Friday Night Lights is the biggest show around. And, here in California, highly-paid professionals can waste untold numbers of hours arguing about football. I know: I’m one of them.
A small group of friends and I have, for years, passed our gridiron thoughts and musings around out of sheer love for discussing the game. Fantasy football leagues introduced me to a few others who were similarly afflicted. The internet, of course, is home to a billion different football sources (the Sickness is wide-ranging, fast-moving, and incurable). So, I decided it would be a fun experiment and creative outlet to create a place for those of us who have a nerd-like thirst for further discussion of and knowledge about the game and business of football. If you have seen every episode of America’s Game 19 times and believe that the Gruden QB Camp was the greatest hour in the history of television, this is the site for you.
We have no intention of breaking news, providing thorough statistical breakdowns to help you with your fantasy squad, or of maintaining any semblance of journalistic objectivity. We do hope to provide quality football writing, thought-provoking commentary, and an occasional laugh. We aim to be like an online sports bar. If you stick around long enough you’re bound to get to know the characters, pick up on the lingo, and find a spot to fit in. So drop in regularly. Have a click around, drop a comment here and there. Get into the pile!
Just remember- there is no offseason here at FootballSickness.com. IS YOUR HELMET ON?