MojoFiction: Brought To You By DraftKings.com

Just to cover our rear ends legally, DraftKings.com probably had nothing to do with this. Thank you.

Ah, fall. That time of year when thoughts turn to college football for some inexplicable, and possibly evil reason that we can’t figure out because the staff here at MojoFiction is not particularly interested in college football because we went to a division-16 school that won’t see a televised game ever in the history of the world. Now you know why we don’t like college football, so stop asking about it already.

Of course, everyone else wants collegiate football. According to whatdocougarswant.com, strapping, twenty-something, muscular football players are exactly what they want. Why not-muscular-but-making-up-for-it-by-being-funny male bloggers didn’t make the list, we don’t know. Jessica Rabbit was fine with it.

To make matters worse, our very own son, who is not anywhere near old enough to go to college, is completely obsessed with college football. This past weekend we were bouncing around between the Notre Dame game, Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Alabama, which, as you know, is a lot of driving because these games were not exactly close by. And he had a favorite for each game.

“How did you decide who you like to win the game?” we asked.

“Why did you go to a middling state college whose only claim to fame is they were once named a top party school back when you were actually young?”

“How do you even know about that?”

“Bama!”

“Do you mean Alabama?”

“You heard me.”

Where was this conversation even going? He’s only 10!

Thankfully, we were saved by the start of the NFL season. The Madden Machine kicked off last night with the illustrious New England Deflaters versus a team to be named later, which may sound like cheating but you can’t prove anything so what are you going to do about it?

Sounds promising, right?

Unfortunately, after some lazy investigation, it turns out that the NFL and the NCAA are colluding in a massive conspiracy to ruin MojoFiction’s daily commute to work. It’s actually in their by-laws (rule 4.65.3-bx64²³ – look it up). Why would they target us?

Because the NFL hates baseball!

See, MojoFiction hangs out in the magical realm called Chicagoland. As you know, Chicagoland is a dystopian world run by teenagers looking for angsty romance through a series of brutal competitions and also a brutal series of novels. But somewhere in there the Chicago Cubs are having a remarkable baseball season (oops, we forgot to tell you that we love baseball – our bad). So, when the good folks at MojoFiction switch on the radio in the morning during our drive to work, we expect to hear some Cubs talk. Surprise! It’s all about who’s going to bowl games this year, or worse, what this week’s best fantasy players are.

Thanks to a sub-paragraph of the above mentioned NCdoubleNFL rule, local radio stations are required to pre-empt meaningful sports talk with hour-long shows dedicated to point spreads and fantasy drafts. It’s not important that Ohio State beats Michigan. It’s important that they beat Michigan by 6, or the win doesn’t count and Bruno is going to take a Louisville Slugger to your kneecaps.

Ha! Ha! Just kidding. It’s an aluminum bat now – cuts down on replacement costs.

Unfortunately, broadcasters often talk less about the teams and more about the spread, the over/under, the left/righter, and every other gambling option. MojoFiction can’t afford to gamble on college ball. Talk about something we can afford, like beer.

Of course, over the past few weeks, when sports pundits were not waxing poetic about how badly Texas A&M was going to pound whichever Pop Warner team they scheduled for themselves at home, they were talking about the NFL. And by the NFL, we mean training camp: Who looked like what? Who said what to whom? Who’s really injured? What do you mean we have to report on the Bears? Really? We don’t have a better team to report on?

So, sports broadcasters have spent the last month spending hundreds of hours completely speculating about what may or may not happen during the football seasons and how much money people may or may not make on it via online fantasy-football-we’re-not-a-casino websites. The worst offender is ESPN (we’re looking at you Mike and Mike), who bring on celebrity ex-NFL players to legitimize their endless speculation.

Okay, if you’re playing at home, you know that the score is NCAANFL-14, MojoFiction-2 (we missed a field goal but notched a safety), and Baseball-0.

Hopefully, with football underway, talk in town can return to the playoff run at hand for our beloved Chicago Cubs. But, of course, the Bears play on Sunday against the Packers, and there isn’t enough time in any given day to bemoan that one. So we expect a year’s worth of talk about a 3-hour game.

Of course, with all this baseball-and-MojoFiction-Happiness-Suppression being perpetrated by football, we decided to get back at the NFL the only way we knew how: by staying up all night to watch the Patriots-Steelers season opener.

God help us, we love football.