I Work Too Hard to Put Up With This Bullshit
You go to work every day. You bust your ass. You bring home a little money, but it’s never enough. That’s okay, you don’t ask for much. But one thing you do ask for is the same thing any other hard-working person in America asks for: to take a good chunk of that money and wager it on NFL football. And the only thing you demand, the only thing that every hard-working person in America is entitled to, is that, if you do happen to bet a good chunk of your hard-earned money on NFL football, you don’t have to put up with any bullshit.
Like what? What kind of bullshit?
Oh, I don’t know, how about, let’s say you have a bunch of money riding on the Ravens in the AFC Championship Game, giving points, and let’s say the other team scores a touchdown to put your team – and therefore your hard-earned money – in jeopardy, and let’s say the guy who just scored that touchdown happens to be in a romantic relationship with a celebrity pop star, and let’s say after he scores his touchdown, the camera shows that celebrity pop star jumping up and down in the luxury box, cheering on her boyfriend, and by extension, cheering on the fact that you are about to forever lose the money you worked so hard for in the first place. Fuck you, America! That kind of bullshit.
The NFL knows that we hard-working Americans like to bet on football. The NFL wants us hard-working Americans to bet on football. It used to be an open secret, but now it’s legal in 38 states. Nowadays, the NFL “partners” with DraftKings, FanDuel and other sites to facilitate, promote, and encourage Americans of all stripes who happen to be physically located in any of those 38 states to wager their hard-earned money on NFL football games. This is serious business for those Americans. We busted our ass for that money.
If the NFL knows this, why do we have to endure bullshit?
Like when you’re watching the AFC Championship Game with a group of people, a game that has profound financial implications for you and your family, and two of them start engaging in a side conversation about not the game that we’re all watching, but about last week’s game, and about how another NFL player whose shitty team was already eliminated from the playoffs, who happens to be the brother of the player who is dating the celebrity pop star, was in the physical proximity of the celebrity pop star and for some reason wasn’t wearing a shirt, and one of those people refers to that other player only by his first name, “Jason.”
We now have actual football fans referring to a sweaty bearded former NFL player by his first name - while an athletic competition is going on, mind you - all because we have somehow been sucked into a vortex where the conversation is being dominated by people who have exactly zero dollars at stake.
That kind of bullshit.
It used to be that bullshit was mostly confined to just the Super Bowl and the accompanying festivities. Sure, you could always count on a grotesque, hyper-sexualized halftime show performed by one of the avatars of our rapidly crumbling civilization. You could similarly set your clock to an orgy of consumer indulgence whereby billions of viewers become a captive audience doomed to watch, and encouraged to comment upon, dozens and dozens of bloated, lobotomized commercial advertisements. This was always part of the deal. It’s the reason I only watch the Super Bowl with serious people, people who know the value of a hard-earned American dollar. Otherwise, the bullshit would swallow up everything else. At least back then the rest of us hard-working Americans could lay claim to every other NFL game, 18 weeks of the regular season followed by three glorious weeks of the playoffs, up to and including the NFC and AFC Championship Games.
That bargain was broken this season.
I knew it was all over at one point yesterday, when, after the broadcast cut to the celebrity pop star openly mocking me and my impending financial ruin, one of my friends wondered out loud about the other people watching the game in the luxury box with the celebrity pop star. While he was wondering who her friends were, I was wondering who mine were.
Today I will go back to work and bust my ass trying to replenish the till. Like many hard-working Americans, I have two weeks to get straight before laying it all on the line on Super Bowl Sunday. Two full weeks before I sit down, crack open a beer, click open my FanDuel Sportsbook app, and watch the Super Bowl.
By myself.