No, we're not talking religion or cults. Though we are talking religious devotion and there certainly are plenty of cult figures involved. But this is better than religion and whole lot more fun than waiting around in purple shrouds for the comet to come. At least for the devotee.
It's the NFL football season; when the gods of the grid-iron dominate the domicile and demonstrate their supremacy in the arena of sports. It's hard to believe that the season is so quickly upon us. But it's true. The powers-that-be have beatified the greats of the game by their induction into the Hall of Fame. Dan 'Danimal' Hampton has been enshrined, as has Jim 'No-ring' Kelly. The symbolic pre-pre-season contest in Canton has been held and the Japanese have again witnessed the perplexing spectacle of American football replete with TV time-outs. So, this must be the dawn of a new season of NFL football. No mistake.
Amongst the more estranged households in, say, Estonia, the NFL football season is undoubtedly met with less than keen anticipation. For the more astute of us, however, it marks the advent of weeks of ceremonious attention to ritual and detail; the requisite re-ordering of personal agendas and commitments so as to comply with the canons of the schedule of televised games; the fervent reading of ciphered texts, the meaning of which, if penetrated, will allow one to tape one contest while viewing another; the gathering up of sacramental provisions to nourish us during the long hours of sequestration. It is this sequestration, alone or in the glad and rowdy company of fellow votaries, which sometimes causes the most painful and taxing test of one's devotion to the game.
It is not, of course, the separation from the community of family and friends, per se, that is the point of conflict. The game sustains us in its transcendent drama. The game is the revivifier of myth and the revitiliser of legend. The forces of good and evil, panoplied in Kevlar armor, emblazoned in heraldic insignia, on a clearly defined battleground, waging a war of territorial possession through the skill and valor of each combatant on the field as generaled by the hosts of coaches in strict accordance to the precepts of the NFL under the vigilant eyes of the exegetic constabulary on the field. We reaffirm the symbols of our collective unconsciousness and re-emerge from the ritual with a lucid understanding of our species' role in the universal pageant. It is modern man's version of the sweat-lodge and the Dream-time.
