
Okay, that's fine, but I am talking about America here, not the whole world, and I think that I have come up with a good example of just how football affects the American people. See, every regular season runs for seventeen weeks, but each team plays sixteen games, meaning that each team has a bye week somewhere during the season. On any given week, starting in week four, four teams have a bye week each week. This week is the bye week for my team, and quite frankly, I am not exactly sure what to do with myself.
See, for me and tens of millions of other Americans, Sundays in autumn are scheduled and formed around football. I will attempt to schedule events or chores away from whatever time my team is playing, which is usually in the afternoon. I will do whatever I have to do in the morning. I will save certain other things for nighttime, because the hours between say noon and three I am usually parked in front of the TV watching football. If I can't be there for whatever reason I assure you that I won't be far from the radio listening to what is going on. Everything in my life, and the life of all those other people, comes to a screeching halt for like three hours. I think that's pretty powerful.

This weekend, however, is a completely different animal. Since my team has a bye this week, I am not exactly sure how to go about myself. I sort of feel like a ship without a sail because the one thing that always drove my schedule is gone. I sort of feel like I am drifting on the sea through the Doldrums with no hope of making it through. I mean, it's not that I won't watch or listen to ANY football at all, but I am not exactly going to chain myself to the mass media like I otherwise would. And this afternoon I might actually find myself out in the sunshine doing something productive. How strange is that? I won't be able to figure out what the hell is going on.
So that's all I got. That is the best that I can demonstrate just how much of an event, how deeply ingrained in society, is football in America. I know that it won't convince the soccer skeptics, and that's okay. But that is how it goes. I am like a ship without a sail on this bye week Sunday. Hopefully I land on a productive shore.
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