The Bloggets Revisited

While driving around this past week, I passed a sign posted outside a business that read, "Official Apathy Supplier for Superbowl XL." Although the big game is just down the road in Detroit, the sign reflects the feelings of many Michiganders.
Oh, we see and hear the super hype everywhere. They even have an NFL channel on our cable TV line-up now. And I have an official list of SuperBowl XL events in front of me here.

Lemme see . . . there's Taste of the NFL featuring chefs and current and former NFL players (ticket $400) . . . an NFL Alumni Super Bowl Home tour of some of the finest homes in the Detroit area (ticket $300) . . . or how about the NFL Bocce Ball Tournament ($6,000 for a team of four participants.) All a bit pricy for an average guy like myself.

Well, there's the Motown winter blast featuring ice skating, music and a snow slide. That is free but a bus ride to downtown Detroit, which they suggest as an alternative to trying to find a parking spot downtown, is $7 one way.

I have to admit that the folks organizing SuperBowl XL have done a great job of marketing and preparing this year's festivities. Still, I'll settle for memories of my own football championship game that took place last month. I blogged earlier about the Bloggets, my entry into my son Scott's fantasy football league. This was my first year at this. And I took it very seriously.

I read more about pro football than I ever had before. I checked scouting reports, injury reports, schedules, statistics, player histories, astrological forecasts . . . I even boned up on our hapless Detroit Lions. At 2 a.m. on Monday I would often wake up and check the final scores and statistics from the weekend on my computer.

Any time I talked with either of my sons, the subject had to include fantasy football. My devotion was not lost upon Scott. For Christmas, he got me a trophy inscribed "The Bloggets. 2005 FF Champions."

Yes, I won. It was a close final between my Bloggets and my older son Greg's Detroiiiiit Football. Although I won by a few points, I lucked out when Greg inexplicably decided to bench Seattle Seahawks Shawn Alexander, the top running back in the NFL this season.

Maybe Greg thought that Alexander was hurt and wouldn't play. Or maybe he thought the Seahawks would rest him going into their own play-offs. Then again, maybe Greg, thinking along the same lines as my other son, gave me a little Christmas present of his own.