Column: Are you ready for all of the football?

We are less than two weeks away from the start of the NFL season.

On Saturday, Aug. 26, we will begin a stretch of 19 consecutive weeks of college football. High school football is underway. The CFL, the XFL and whatever other blank FL you can imagine are all looking to capitalize on the game of football.

Baseball is trying to grab more appeal by tweaking its sport with pitch clocks and banning shifts. The NBA is looking for more regular season zip by adding an in-season tournament. Golf has added a Fed Ex Cup, MLS plucked away a superstar in Lionel Messi, and every sport is just trying to seek as much attention as we all give football.

Why has this imperfect, and so violent, sport captured the attention of so many people? It’s tough to say but football has been hot, still is hot, and more and more companies are trying to grab a slice of the money-making machine. We have games all over the United States on just about every day of the week. From Pop Warner to High School, throw in Junior Colleges, NAIA, DIII, DII, FCS, and FBS. Even the FBS is trying to make college football even more powerful with super conferences so they can make even more money.

The NFL is on CBS, ESPN, FOX, NBC, Amazon, and the Red Zone. On TVs, radios, tablets, computers, phones and just about everywhere you can imagine. We have had games in Mexico City, Canada, and this year the league is headed back to London and Germany. Football is everywhere and yet somehow it hasn’t appeared to get over-saturated.

Ratings suggest this to be true. Attendance at games backs this up. The appetite for football is very healthy right now. This sport has had a near-death experience on the field, divisive political stances, social justice campaigns, and transgressions from owners, coaches, and players, and yet it continues to thrive.

Football appears to be scandal proof and the NFL knows it. Fans aren’t bothered by topics like spy-gate or deflate-gate. They don’t care if a coach had a bounty out for injury-filled hits on the other team. What do they want? Draft picks to come through, depth charts to be filled, touchdowns to be scored by their heroes, and as many points as they can get on their fantasy teams.

This sport isn’t perfect, but right now fans love, it flaws and all. That’s it for me, I got to get back to this preseason game. Do I have a problem?

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