#nfl-rivalry

#nfl-rivalry

The Chicago Cubs won their 8th straight last night ... a game that concluded with an overturned call using the Automated Balls and Strikes system.

Cheering on your favorite team can cause severe mood swings, violent outbursts, and even, at times, tightness in your chest. It's why I'm a fair-weather fan. There's a backstory: I used to have a team. As a Baltimore native, when the Ravens came to our city in 1996, I was all in. After buying tons of black and purple, winning two Super Bowls, and then white knuckling through the lackluster seasons that followed, I decided to set a boundary for my own sanity.

St-Juste's career in Washington fizzled out quickly. He's got the size and length to be impactful, but lapses in concentration were an ongoing frustration, and it was no surprise to see Washington gradually send him to the fringes before letting him walk in 2024 free agency.

Please, no. Please, can we have football still be football and not tinkered with until it is some algorithm-based product designed to maximize flashiness for the attention-deficit crowd? Can football, for all its brute violence, remain a thinking person's game, where strategy and decisions and variables and a million little things still matter, including snow or wind or rain or sunshine or calm or, who really cares?

The team's longtime home has been Soldier Field, built in 1924. It is the oldest stadium in the NFL, and open to the elements. When icy snows fall, opposing teams shiver in the lake winds. The Bear players wear short sleeves, and sling touchdown passes. Bear down, as we fans say. Domes are for tea parties, not football.

The Bears and the Packers, they should not like each other. I think it's as simple as that. I think that's going to make this rivalry, this game, something that people are going to watch going forward.