There’s a contingent in my orbit that believes I still maintain an emotional investment in the NFL, specifically the branch located in the Rocky Mountains.

Bless their hearts.

Granted, that particular contingent is of the mind that I conduct tech support for a living and that I appreciate receiving the bantha fodder produced by the merchandising arm around a particular movie series.

God love ’em.

For those of you kindred spirits with the short attention spam who lack the patience and tolerance to read the rest of this Homeric rant, I’ll make the point real quick.

Afterward, I’ll move my laundry around, go walk the dogs, run an errand or two, and then return with the rant.  That will give you plenty of time to scram if you want.

My only emotional investment in the NFL involves the expedited onset of golf season for one particular team.  Otherwise, I could give a plump and juicy rat’s ass about everything else going on in that league.  It’s sad that team still occupies government subsidized real estate in my head.  I guess I’m still bitter about that incident in January, 1978.

Furthermore, my career parallels more of an orchestra conductor than it does tech support.

And last of all, I have no need or desire to receive themed coloring books, pez dispensers, soap, or other trinkets from a series of science fiction movies.  I’m 54 gosh darn it.   Stop treating me like I’m 46.

So there’s the crux of this post.  If you want to know the reasons behind it, keep reading.  Otherwise……

Well, you know.

I’m going to go rotate my laundry and then walk the dogs.

Pause for effect.

Okay I’m back for now. 

Back to the sign.

All I need is Broncos Football and my dog.

No.

I suspect that the contingent in my orbit who believe this about me hasn’t been properly disabused of the notion.

Strange enough, I’ve been writing about my issues with the NFL for a better part five years now.  You can change that to ten years if you count all of my gritchin’ about the half time shows.

Perhaps that particular contingency in my orbit either read my verbal brilliance on the matter and has subsequently forgotten my stance, or they didn’t read my verbal brilliance on the matter. 

I’m pretty sure the later applies.

God love ’em.

Going further, I’m pretty sure I haven’t verbalized my stance with them either.  With that, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they just don’t know better.

Bless their heart.

Of course, there was a time when the statement on that sign applied. 

As I recall, I was up to 50 pounds heavier, my finances were a mess, I was having performance issues at work, my marriage was starting to crumble, and I had a short fuse.

At the same time, I was up to date on the goings on in the NFL. 

I was involved in a fantasy league.  I wore my customized Broncos jersey to work every year on Halloween where I dressed up as a NFL Enthusiast.  I wore that jersey every year around Super Bowl time when jerseys were encouraged at the office.

Now I’m not saying that the fact that I followed the NFL was contributory to my woes.

What I am saying is that when I stopped following the NFL, I replaced all of the time I wasted on the sport by finding other things to do.  Benefits from these changes slowly began to take effect.  When the lockdown happened in 2020, I put my reset into high gear and changed my ways.

I started reading more.  I read the Bible daily and have done so since mid-2020.  On average I read a few non-fiction books each month ranging in topics from faith, to self-improvement, to personal finance, to politics and current events, to the occasional autobiography.   Just to round out the edges, I’ll throw in collections of articles published by humorists as well.

I changed my eating habits, namely by disengaging in my relationship with the fast food industry.  That was pretty easy during the lockdown.

I started walking the dog more.  That changed to dogs in the fall of 2021.  There are times when those dogs will get the opportunity to put me in tow up to three times as day.

It was 2018 when we started cleaning up our financial situation.  I can’t remember the last time where we had one of those moments where we needed to get groceries or pay a bill and didn’t know where the money was going to come from.  The lockdown was inconsequential where my finances were concerned because I continued to work through it.  The only change there was the allowance I draw from each paycheck for my own pocket cash didn’t get spent much and got saved instead.

I have no tolerance for watching live TV anymore.  Big Pharma seems to sponsor about everything I bother to watch, and when they’re not the ones flipping the bill, the other advertisers waste the better part of my commercial watching time insulting my intelligence or my virtue.  I subscribe to the ‘no commercial’ package for my streaming needs nowadays, but even that isn’t always free of the ploys to get me to conform to the pattern of this world.

I’ve spent more time in the last three years extricating particulate from my ears with a Bobby pin (the rounded end) and scratching that insatiable itch in my calves than I have watching football or anything else on network TV.

For what it’s worth, that customized Broncos jersey hangs on the wall in a display case where the team name is not prominent.  I hung on to that because it represents when I became a father, and because the TharpSter Mom gave it to me.

So what am I going to do with that sign?

I can’t put it on display as-is, because it just doesn’t apply.

I thought about altering it in manners depicted in the following slide show. Hit the side arrows to advance to the next picture.

In the end, I’ve decided not to alter the sign.

Instead, I’m going to put it on display for all who enter to see.  Granted, the location in which it’s on display is in the branch office which is located about 5 hours north on I-35.

I’m given to understand that another contingent in my orbit who manages that branch has plenty of call options in place for Broncos football and his dog.