Game day

It is 9:40am Monday morning, and by now most of the weeks games are done, dusted, over. The late-afternoon games are possibly still underway, and the Sunday night game is still to come.

Sunday night is the NFL's prime time game. It is shown on NBC, free-to-air, and features my favourite commentary team of Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth. NFL commentary teams typically pair a pro-commentator with an ex-pro footballer. In this case its Chris who is the ex-NFL player. I really like these guys but I believe its a controversial mixing, with many people not liking his style. When NBC bought the rights for the Sunday game they wanted Al Michaels, who was with CBS I think, which, I think, is owned by Disney. Or maybe he was with ESPN which is owned by Disney. In any case, NBC paid a crapload of money to Disney for Al, including signing over a number of rights to shows and things.

Another great pairing of commentators is Joe Buck and Troy Aikman.  Aikman was of course the great Dallas Cowboys QB from the 90s and sports [I think] 3 superbowl titles.They are the main commentators for FOX. I love seeing them together in the box, Joe Buck is so small compared to Aikman, but always seems to have glassy-eyes for this super-hero QB. Adorable.

Back to game-day:

For all of Monday I try to avoid everything to do with football. I carefully scan Australian news, and avoid American news sites altogether. I skip my twitter feed. I don't even look at Fantasy scores, I have no idea how the Doof's, Endless or any other team is going. I am cut off. Monday night is football night. I get home and race to the tv, carefully select two games to watch and that's my night. Two games, back-to-back, with no knowledge of the results. Purity.

Tonight its the Redskins at Packers for the first game followed by 49ers at Seattle. 49ers v Seattle is fast becoming the best rivalry in football and I cant wait to watch that game. Two young, on-fire teams. Should be a blast.

Redskins have one of the most interesting young players in the League in Robert Griffin III, RG3. He was drafted 2nd in the 2012 draft and in his rookie year last year he set pretty much all rookie records there are until his tore his knee in the play-offs. Surgery and recovery all off-season, no pre-season, he played his first game with his team last week in Week 1. A very poor first half followed by a pretty decent 2nd half. RG3 is an amazing player to watch.

Then there's the Packers. Perennial play-off contenders, best QB in the league with Aaron Rodgers. They lost last week to the 49ers in a fairly spiteful game, it will be interesting to see how they respond following the loss.

Football, my favourite time of year.