Marking Time: What Football Means To This Hockey Fan

Tommie Lee
Sep 4, 2014
3 min read

Labor Day has come and gone, and with it a young fan’s fancy turns to thoughts of people knocking each other around.

Football is the appetizer of the Hockey Fan. Most Blackhawks fans love the Bears, or the Colts, or even the Packers. Most hockey fans tend to keep it regional. I, however…don’t: I spent a lot of time in Florida on vacation as a kid and I remember the summer of 1976 when everyone in Tampa/St. Pete was raving about the Buccaneers getting started. So I became a Bucs fan…and a season and a half after their opening kickoff, that team finally DID get started. Again, I’m kind of an anomaly. I like the Bears & Colts, but my heart belongs to Bucco Bruce and Captain Fear.

I look at this football season as marking time, like we did in marching band. Football isn’t necessarily “in the way” of my hockey. I’m not THAT guy. It’s just keeping my sports fandom warm for me. As a Bucs fan, I have a team that isn’t even remotely poised to make a playoff run, so not getting to see my favorite team isn’t that big of a deal to me this year. This is especially true now that the team has the ugliest jerseys in the league. Those new Tampa unis look like they belong to a player-created franchise on Madden. The numerals belong on a digital clock. The helmet logo can now be seen from space. The orange was thrown in awkwardly. Even the old USFL uniforms think the new Bucs jerseys look silly.

Forgive the vent. I digress.

The NFL, it can be argued, is slowly becoming less and less fun to watch. A lot of this has to do with almost as many rule changes each year as you find in the tax code. Ticket prices are brutal, too, and the commute and parking rates make it an expensive, miserable experience for many fans. If you want to get into football, a great way to do that is by checking out the High School games. If you still live in the town you graduated from, go see what your school is up to. Those kids need to see faces in the stands, and they just might be trying harder out there than the big-money NFL guy marking time in a contract year.

It can also be argued that hockey is in danger of becoming less fun by way of watering down the talent pool. Rumors of new franchises in Seattle, Las Vegas, Toronto, and Quebec City would stretch the quality level a bit. Fans saw it happen when the NFL swelled from 28 teams to 30, and then again to 32. We’re deep in every position right now in Chicago, but how stacked would the Blackhawks still be in a 34-team NHL?

The good news is…we’re not there yet. We’re just waiting to see what happens this season. And in the meantime…we are all ready for some football. Because we know what comes next.

Come October however, the priority will shift in a big way. And then we get to REALLY see people knock each other around, without yellow hankies being thrown around every 60 seconds to kill the momentum.

Cap-Watch: Chicago remains a couple of million dollars over the salary cap. A move is likely to happen soon, as Training Camp is lumbering in our direction like a stampede of stick-wielding wildebeests.

Side note: As I was writing this, I realized I was wearing a Blackhawks hat today, on the NFL’s opening day. I also noticed that my keys featured not one but two Blackhawks keychains. Sigh.

Go Hawks.