With Only 6 Weeks Until Training Camp, I'M Ready For Some Football!

There are only three seasons for me, Football, Basketball and summer vacation. But football is my first love, and even though it's 90 degrees outside and the beach is beckoning, my mind is already starting to focus on it.

No worries about my favorite baseball team because I don't have one. No cares about the Detroit Red Wings, New York Red Bulls, pro beach volleyball or the WNBA. I'll try to enjoy summer for the next six weeks, but inevitably my mind returns to the thing I live for: The beginning of training camp and football season.

It's a time that while everything else is coming to an end, seeds of hope spring for 32 teams and millions their of fans. Can our draft picks play? Can we beat the Cowboys this year? Who's going to take over at quarterback? Everyone starts fresh with aspirations of beating their rivals and winning the Super Bowl.

And as recent history shows, almost anyone can.

The Giants weren't on anyone's short list last year, and recent Super Bowl participants like Carolina, Tampa and Seattle feed the feeling that all fans have, this year could be our year. "Did you see the stud DE the Cardinals drafted? He's the missing piece dude! Wait and see." It's a conversation that takes place in a million similar forms around all 32 teams every single year.

Unlike hockey, basketball and baseball, with ungodly seasons stretching across 3 real seasons, reality crashes the party almost immediately in football. By Monday night each week, 1/16th of the year is decided for everyone. There's one game a week, not every night, trivializing each game into oblivion like baseball. Not every second night like basketball, leading to stale regular season performances.

Once a week, one game, one chance. That's it.

A slow start doesn't doom your team's chances for success, it only makes them harder. Going into the last 2 weeks of last season, over half the teams in the league still had a shot at the playoffs. While people may bemoan the parity reflected in that fact, it's the biggest reason that football retains its position as Americas favorite sport. It's never over until it's over in the NFL, just ask New England Patriot fans. A 10 - 6 wild card team won the super bowl, last year. It's what keeps us tuning in each week.

So whether in anticipation of redemption, or with the hope of another championship, I, like millions of other fans anxiously await the beginning of football season. We all just know that absolutely, positively this is the year that our team going all the way baby!