I am usually quite cynical when it comes to the NFL eclipsing non-football related events on the calendar but am thankful this year that our presidential election falls on both the trade deadline and after a pretty consequential week of football. This is not because I want to ignore the presidential election. This isn’t a cynical take on the candidates. I have nothing to offer in that regard and I’m sure there’s plenty of places you can go to find it.
Forgive the platitude, but I like having a structure that keeps us all on the same plane of existence even when it feels like we’re miles apart. This feels like a surface level thing to say but not until you’ve traversed the part of life where you go from saying it because it’s a nice thing to say to feeling the exact opposite and shutting people of a different belief out of your life, to coming full circle and just trying to grab at the common ground because having more people in your corner is better than having fewer. I know I have a luxury in being able to say this and for some people their political and social lives are irreparable. Because of what I do for a living—a job I’m incredibly grateful for—it keeps me in a kind of eternal social middle ground where anyone and everyone I speak to wants to talk about football. It’s not a “stick to sports” deal for me, though. It’s a “let’s connect over how disappointing the Cowboys are before we have the tough conversations” kind of deal.
