I come to you today with a heavy heart. It’s a sad time for me when football season draws agonizingly near an end, leaving me to wonder what I’ll do with my time now. Read? Oh, I’m not much for reading; I don’t think it’s particularly healthy, really. Join the gym and get healthy? Nah, that ship has sailed, I’m afraid. Get up earlier and work more often? Pulease!

For many months, I’ve been logged onto football sites dozens of hours weekly in a dogged effort to uncover some underrated fact or trend that might lend an edge in picking college and NFL winners. To the unenlightened, it might sound like a colossal waste of time for a chronic gambler with dubious past success, but for me, each football season is a blessed chapter.

I was hooked in ’79 at a Pennsylvania VFW when I asked someone why the crusty character leaning on the pinball machine seemed so popular. Turns out he was booking bets on the Denver/Dallas Super Bowl, and I clumsily placed my first-ever losing wager on the Broncos. A 36-year love affair began that day. Spike had me at “Dallas minus four.”

In the weeks before the 49ers and Ravens Super Bowl XLVI, let’s examine this glorious sport that makes instant millionaires out of young thugs who would otherwise be in penitentiaries. Detroit Lions defensive tackle, Ndamukong Suh comes to mind. Maybe that player he stomped on had taunted him with “Hi Suzie Q.” In the 80s song “A Boy Named Sue,” he “grew up tough and he grew up mean; his fists got hard and his wits got keen,” making a vow to find and kill that “dirty, mangy dog that named me Sue.”

He finally chanced upon the deadbeat dad that “…left home when I was 3 and didn’t leave much to Ma and me; just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze,” dealing five-card-stud in a Gatlinburg honky tonk. He introduced himself thusly: “My name is SUE. How do you DO? Now you’re gonna DIE!”

After busting a chair across his teeth, their epic fight crashed through a wall into the street, “…kickin’ and a gougin’ in the mud and the blood and the beer.” Long story short, after brawling to a bloody draw, Sue got the jump and pulled his gun just as Pop reached for his own. Dad said he wouldn’t blame Sue for killing him, but first explained:

“Son, this world is rough, and if a man’s gonna make it he’s gotta be tough, and I knew I wouldn’t be there to help you along. So I gave you that name and I said goodbye; I knew you’d have to get tough or die … and it’s that name that made you strong.” He contended: “…but you oughta thank me before I die, for the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye, cause I’m the SOB that named you Sue…”

Sue didn’t kill him after all; they most likely hugged and tied on a big drunk while bad-mouthing women.

That “get tough-or-die” anger may have also aided Detroit’s Suh, but humiliating monikers seldom have such positive endings. When Denver “Tebowed” my Steelers, you may have heard a Steelers defensive lineman, “William Gay” mentioned. There’s also an offensive lineman for the Jaguars named “Guy Whimper.” If Gay and Whimper ever collided, I wonder if it would even make a sound?

And take football refs … please! The angst they’ve visited upon me this season is immeasurable. That’s why instant replay is as profound a technology as DNA, without which, innocent people would be executed and murderers prowling our streets looking for new victims.

Well, without instant replay, unworthy teams would be in the playoffs and deserving teams watching from their couches. But since some horrible calls aren’t reviewable — and sometimes the replay booth protects referee injustices, such as the obvious Packer “fumble that wasn’t” on Sunday — rampant injustice is still prevalent.

It’s delightfully ironic that the constant recipient of my angry, retrospective ref-bashing IS a ref. Dave Beemer never replied when I texted after a particularly egregious call, “Refs with flags are like cops with tazers; they’re constantly looking for the slightest reason to use them!”*

*Footnote: I meant other cops, not any that might be reading this. I add this since I have no desire to be pulled from my vehicle and lit up. And you can bet a disgruntled ref walking by would keep his flag in his pocket for once, calling the tazing “incidental contact.”

I’ll most likely have sizable bets on this week’s playoff games.

Should a referee with a desire to be relevant call a phantom penalty — like their favorite, roughing-the-passer; i.e. even looking at the QB wrong — I’ll vow to one day track down that ref. Should I run into him in some Gatlinburg optometrist office, I’ll say,  “My name is BLOUGH. You cost me a THOU! Now you’re gonna DIE!”*

*Footnote: Killing is of course, never an appropriate response!