NFL Playoffs: So Your Team Didn't Make It? Three Solutions to Help You Cope

It is playoff time in the NFL once again, which means die-hard fans of 20 different teams across the country are suddenly left without anything to do next weekend.

Sure, some will still watch the playoffs because their love for football outweighs the love for their team. Some are done with the NFL as soon as the NFL is done with their team, and they already have alternative plans with their friends and family.

I have done no research on this, have conducted no polls and interviewed no “subjects,” but I would venture to guess that the vast majority of the fans of these 20 teams are somewhere in the middle of those two extremes and have absolutely no idea what they are going to do to fill the void. Well, this article is for those fans!

Here are three things that you can do next Sunday to help you get over your team’s demise:

Let’s Get Spiritual: Go to Church

No, your mother has not hijacked your computer. You are reading correctly. It is too late, you already saw this, so do not even consider clicking the little red “X” in the top right-hand corner of your screen. You are reading this for a reason.

Every Saturday since the start of the NFL season, as soon as you got home from your evening’s festivities, you would drunkenly stumble to your computer to check up on your fantasy football team, making last second trades and roster moves.

Then you perused on over to your favorite team’s message board to see what “troll” was talking smack about your team. Of course, that person was wrong, so you had to spend anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours formulating the absolute best retort to their weak arguments before you could go to bed with a grin on your face. It is your obligation as a fan, after all!

Then you would wake up late and hungover on Sunday morning just in time to throw on your lucky jersey and run to your buddy’s house for the game. Seriously, couldn’t you at least find the time to shower?

But that is beside the point.

Before you could takeoff, you needed to check the message boards once again to see if that “troll” replied to your comment overnight...of course not, what a coward.

Then, at your buddies, you would spend your entire Sunday drinking, cursing, and yelling at the television, only to get home Sunday night with a sore throat and a headache. You would make the mistake of checking on your fantasy team and see that they lost as well. More cursing.

Well, fantasy football has been over, and now so is your team. You have no more excuses to stay up late on Saturdays checking up on your fantasy stats and scaring off “trolls.” You should wake up more refreshed than ever next Sunday.

So rather than spending your day yelling at your television set, get your butt to church next Sunday morning. And this is none of my business, but after seeing how you have acted these past 17 weekends, maybe you should consider the evening service too!

Use that Brain: Read a Book

I considered recommending yard work and chores as an alternative to your Sunday football activities until I realized that you should have been doing this all along…on Saturdays!

If your weeds are overgrown, your house is a mess, and your dog smells like an apartment dumpster on a summer afternoon, then I cannot help you. My task is to help you fill your Sunday, and Sunday is not the day for chores.

Sunday is meant for the Three R’s: Rest, Relaxation, and Recreation. Now I could be wrong, but I do not see how pruning trees falls into any of those three categories.

What does? Reading. While I personally recommend a certain Bleacher Report writer for your reading pleasure, I think a Sunday afternoon without football is better suited by a good book and a blanket.

You can read a comedic book to help you smile or a fairy tell to take you to a land far, far away from your football problems. A murder mystery might help you vent your anger, and a history book could help you to learn a little something.

Read a biography if you want to discover fascinating and wonderful people, or check out an auto-biography to discover fascinating, wonderful, and narcissistic people.

If you are having trouble sleeping at night, try a textbook. That always worked for me!

And if you just cannot for the life of you take your mind off football, surely you can find a book about your team’s glory days (sorry Saints fans, this one may not apply to you).

Whatever book you choose, this could be just what you need to take your mind off of things for at least a little while.

Sure, this is not the most exciting activity you could partake in, but in this time of recovery, stimulating your brain with a good book could be the best medicine. And let’s face it; at this time of year, it beats nature walks, bike riding, and picnics. Newsflash: It is cold outside.

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