The preseason is finally here. We can now spend a good 15 minutes anxiously hoping our starters exit the game with both knees and arms firmly intact so the regular season isn’t over before it begins. By now you’ve looked at your Athlon Pro Mag to the point where it’s probably time to get a nice clean one for the coffee table, for your game day guests. In that spirit, Athlon presents 10 reasons why we love the NFL. If you need 10 reminders why you love college football, they can be found here.

1. The best sporting spectacle America has to offer

When you tuck in to watch the NFL, there are a few things to remember. You are now watching some of the best of the best of the best athletes who have survived or recovered from some of the most horrendous knee injuries man can sustain. Multiple massive bodies launch themselves into motion only to impact into other massive bodies launched into their own forward motion, the modern day equivalent of a charging infantry collision. Then they get up, shake the dust off and the cobwebs out, and then they do it again, and again, and again. It takes a lot of guts for a 190-pound corner to dive into the legs of Marion Barber coming around the end, which is then followed by having to match T.O. step for step on a 50 yard flag route without the help of a safety over the top. I think this is overlooked between trips to the refrigerator and bathroom, again and again.

2. New “fan friendly” rules

Nothing represents society like fans at a stadium. In the lower bowl there are those who can afford really good seats, and who actually attend if the team has a winning record. Higher up there are diehards who never miss a game and would mortgage their house, a second time, to pay for their rising PSL’s. In the reaches of the upper decks there are fans who mistake large birds for errant footballs, but still understand the importance of being there and firmly believe that the defense plays well only if everyone in there section goes partially deaf. The voices of a team’s fans yelling in support of a sack or in disgust at a failed 3rd down conversion makes up the beautiful chorus of noise that is an authentic NFL game day atmosphere. It may not always be pretty. Comments may not always approach anatomically correct applications. Little Jimmy’s ears may be subject to language that wouldn’t fly in Sunday school — not that anyone at the game actually made the early service today.

Then there are those that sit in climate controlled luxury, with their own bathroom, who have watched the majority of the game — while at the game — on TV. I am absolutely certain that the NFL fan code of conduct makers must be in this last group. When the NFL announced that lewd and rude behavior would no longer be tolerated, not to mind those who overindulge in liquid courage, my first thought, no kidding, was that this was only possible if I had missed the news about Philadelphia and New Jersey sliding into the Atlantic. In all sincerity, NFL fan code of conduct rule makers, where has your head been the last few years? If controlling people’s behavior was as easy as making decrees don’t you think the government would have tried that by now?

That said I am all for limiting standing when the ball isn’t on my side of the field. Half the time at a game is a commercial break for the viewing audience anyway, why are we standing to watch ads on a big screen? Use some common sense people.

3. Committing to the run — for 2 quarters

This is one thing Madden gets exactly right about NFL offenses. Have you ever started a game bound and determined to make the run game work the whole game, like it’s some undiscovered secret weapon your buddy couldn’t possibly see coming? You will use your imaginary players to wear down your buddy’s imaginary players until you break free on a long 4th quarter touchdown run to seal your imaginary victory. This is a great theory, and I believe many NFL teams also get caught believing it. It works until the realization that both the real and imaginary game is about putting points on the board, and after one or two blown coverage TDs by your defense (see Star WRs note) you’ll find yourself in a 17 point hole going into the third quarter. At this point, with no alternative, you realize its 3-step drop flinging time. This is where in real life, teams like the Cardinals say to themselves what the people on the third concourse have been screaming (as politely as the new fan guidelines allow) since the second quarter, that there are fellows by the names of Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald on our team, why for the love of mercy are we still running off tackle for two yards a pop? The second half will then see a stats explosion while the offense is playing a continuous no-huddle catch-up against a dropping prevent defense, leading up to a last second drive that runs out of gas when Leinart/Warner reaches their ceiling and chucks it right to the free safety, and a broken coaching headset / game controller results.

4. Nobody covers the star WRs

Week after week, a star wide receiver will be wandering wide open spaces until he casually hauls in a bomb to seal victory. Defensive coaches: You’ve seen the highlights, you know what big time WRs are capable of, yet somehow it’s still ok for Terrell Owens to run free through a cover one zone? If you don’t know by now to have at least three people on defense — in the game — looking in the general direction of Randy Moss, I really can’t help you. Put a body on these men. Put two bodies on these men for crying out loud. Any play in the defensive playbook that results in a 6-foot-5 Plaxico Burress going up for a jump ball against a cornerback who can’t stand flat footed in a shallow swimming pool should be immediately thrown out. On a side note, lineman are usually ineligible, but when they are able to hover out into the flat, there’s a good chance you’ll find him standing alone in the corner of the end zone, ball in hand, befuddled defenders 10 yards away.

5. You’ve missed your fantasy team

You know what a tight economy really means? It means that this year, you really need to win you fantasy league. Due to IRS rules it will be probably be under 200 dollars, but you need discretionary income that your wife doesn’t know about and never sniffs the budget sheet, maybe to help you buy something else on this list. For the temporary monetary plus, and for the eternal bragging rights, (you will never forget that magical ’02 fantasy season) you will all together spend approximately 100-plus hours on your roster, waiver wire and hitting refresh on your message/scoreboard. And this is for a team that really only exists in your imagination. I am starting to think most fans would care too much if they ever really got the chance to manage a real team — they might explain our next reason we like the NFL.

6. Al Davis

Imagine you’ve reached the pinnacle of NFL ownership. You’re a legend, maybe more notorious than beholden, but still a legend. You’re a maverick in a world of increasingly made up of cookie cutter bluebloods. You don’t give flip about anything but winning. Your attire is a white tracksuit with gold chains, and you pull it off, because you are a legit icon.

7. You get a new jersey

There is a small chance that the jersey is so threadbare that continued wear would soon dissolve it in the washer. There is a better chance that the player jersey your hard earned coin honored for the last few years got traded (Jason Taylor); unceremoniously released (Shaun Alexander, Travis Henry, Cedric Benson); retired (Rod Smith); unretired then got traded (Brett Farve); or flamed out at his big contract free agency team, and has now returned to the team of his glory years, meaning he’ll wear the same number jersey that might still be in your the closet or deep in a bargain bin somewhere (Jevon Kearse). (Which would have been swell but then the Titans went and changed this year’s home jersey colors from navy to baby blue.)

Maybe you need a new jersey because the old one was stained with liquid in raucous celebration of a touchdown in the first quarter, condiment spills at halftime, or whatever gets aimed at referees as they flee the premises. The most likely scenario is that your $275 customized authentic pro size 58 fan jersey, No. 99 (Beer/Barrell/Buc MAN) has “shrunk” and has begun to restrict on your neck to the point that it is hindering your ability to breath freely. Lucky for you the NFL sells a size 60.

8. Playing last second field goal chicken

A few ticks left on the clock. A score that is eerily close to the spread. The snap, the whistle, the kick, it’s good, and it doesn’t count. This has got to stop. If I were a kicker in the NFL, I would gather all the other kickers at a secret meeting at a suburban Holiday Inn and lay down a new law, right after the one about not trying to tackle the returner running full speed — you know, the one they put into place after Joe Nedney incident of 03” — A.K.A (we) kickers don’t get paid to tackle. Next year, and every year following until the league gets the message, the unlucky fellow who has to kick the first last second field goal to erase 4 quarters of offensive ineptitude should yank the first kick. Not to throw the game, but because coaches can’t help but to call a timeout here, because it looks like coaching, they’ve got nothing to lose, the media will happily roast them postage, and all the true fans who would have called the T.O. have already started calling the post game radio show. Eventually, coaches will wise up when the mulligans start sailing through the uprights, making the coach the goat instead of the kicker. Nobody wants to be the goat in professional sports, because they usually get kicked out the back door into the dark at three in the morning. True, a kicker or two may fall back into the free agent pool as a result of this strategy, but the fellows kickers should agree to start a fund to support their future AFL tryouts.

9. It’s getting bigger
   
I will consistently watch the NFL on TV, it doesn’t even have to be my team. I will put up with the hassle to go to NFL games. I can’t say that about too many other sports or shows these days. I would probably watch a coaching show in the middle of the summer breaking down OTA drills then what the networks put on Tuesday nights. The NFL has a seller’s market, the year-round NFL network is a the perfect example of what the public is ready and willing eat up — like late round NFL combine drills. There is a two week window after the season when people are about ready for things to be over, but two weeks after that, you start looking ahead to next year, which is going to be your year.

10. To put your own failings in perspective.

Nowadays these run the gamut. When someone messes up on the field on a Sunday/Monday night football field, the nation sees it, and then sees it again on the highlight reel, and then shows Tom in accounting on YouTube on Wednesday. This puts my own past exploits in perspective, and makes me feel a lot better about the time I hiked consecutive balls over my quarterback’s head in middle school, which is probably only something that I remember.

Off the field, football players also commit a lot of repressible acts that I would never dream of perpetrating. A few incidents stand out, but you can be sure that I would probably never stoop to knocking up a semi-movie star, realize things weren’t working out, and then in between polishing my multiple Super bowl rings and trophies, start dating an international supermodel simply because I wanted to. I just would never let that happen. The burden of guilt and shame that the unfortunate Tom Brady lives under must be absolutely crushing, and again, I would never let that happen to me.

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