There’s a moment every August when the air starts carrying a different kind of promise. You can’t quite name it yet. The days are still long and hot, but something in the calendar has shifted like the whole country is leaning forward on the balls of its feet, waiting for a starter’s pistol only Americans can hear.
This week, that pistol got a little closer to firing. Preseason football kicked off with a six-pack of NFL games Thursday night. Out in Iowa, Kyle Schwarber launched not one but two home runs into a cornfield during MLB’s Field of Dreams game baseballs disappearing into rows of American grain like something out of a movie. Because, well, it literally was. Tell me that’s not the most American sentence you’ve read all week.
The football doesn’t count yet. The starters are in street clothes on the sideline. But does anybody actually care? College football’s Week Zero is barely two weeks away, and the regular NFL season sits just beyond that. The machinery is warming up. And while most of us have been feeling this anticipation in our bones without quite putting words to it, someone in Washington managed to articulate the whole thing with the precision of a man who’s clearly spent more time thinking about this than any diplomatic cable.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Florida Gators fan who apparently spends his limited free time exactly the way the rest of us do sat down and described what can only be called the platonic ideal of an American weekend.
From OutKick:
The day would actually start much earlier. The greatest show on television today in America is ‘College GameDay.’ Great show. Starts around 10 or 11, and that leads you to noon, and then the noon game, and then there’s a 3:30 game. You could start at 10:00 AM on Saturday, run the whole college football day, sleep for a few hours, then you wake up and then you’re into NFL Gameday. Then you’ve got the 1:00 game, the 4:00 game, the NBC game that night. That is an incredible weekend, in my opinion, in my view.
That’s the whole sermon right there. No hedging. No qualifiers about screen time or carbon footprints or whether football is sufficiently inclusive. Just a grown man who happens to be fourth in line to the presidency describing the simple, sacred rhythm of a fall weekend that tens of millions of Americans have observed for decades. Not a single word needs editing.
Meanwhile, the preseason is already delivering reminders of why this game’s culture matters. New England’s kicker went two-for-five on field goals Thursday night, and when reporters asked Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel what his message to the struggling kicker was, his answer was pure, old-school accountability: “Three. I don’t have a message. We’re expected to make them. That’s pro football.” No participation trophies. No feelings consultation. You want a culture that still rewards competence and punishes mediocrity? It’s alive and well on the football field, even if it’s been chased out of most other American institutions.
I’ll be honest, this is my favorite time of year, and it has nothing to do with the temperature. It’s knowing that in a few short weeks, Saturday mornings will smell like coffee and kickoff. Sunday afternoons will mean RedZone on the big screen and family arguing about fantasy lineups. It’s cornfields and end zones and the national anthem before the opening whistle. When’s the last time the people lecturing us about “progress” produced anything half as unifying as a football Saturday?
The cultural scolds will tell you it’s all too simple. Too provincial. Too unserious. Let them talk. The rest of us will be right where we belong on the couch, remote in hand, surrounded by the people who matter, watching the greatest spectacle this country ever invented.
Two more weekends. Mow the yard. Hang the pictures. Finish the chores.
Then settle in. America’s favorite season is almost here and not a thing about it needs to change.
Sources: OutKick
The post Secretary of State Marco Rubio Describes His Perfect American Weekend: College GameDay Through NFL Sunday appeared first on Patriot Journal.
