The NFL dominates everything, even on people’s birthdays

Hey, it’s almost Thursday night, which means we get to see when every team in the National Football League, but especially your precious little Steelers, plays their silly little regular-season games in 2022.

Sure, you’ve known the who and where for months, but you’ve just got to know the when. Look at you, you’re all hopped up on the National Football League, and all it’s giving you is crumbs this time around.

And what do you do with those crumbs? You inhale them as if you haven’t consumed NFL news in months. “Oh, thank you, NFL, for revealing your schedule to me for free, even though I would have totally paid for the privilege of knowing the “when” part of your royal and totally divine dates and times. Do you have any other schedules you’d like to reveal to us, your gridiron sheeple, like maybe when your grounds crews cut the grass at your teams’ training camp locations?”

Hey, look, I just found a copy of the Steelers 2009 regular-season schedule in my desk drawer. They played teams at various times, days and locations that year. Who knew?

Anyway, as the title suggests, Thursday, May 12, is my birthday, and for the second-straight year, the NFL has decided to reveal its schedule on the very same day. You know, it used to be that I could get away from the NFL for a bit, as could my friends and family, and bask in the glow of my special day without Lord Goodell encroaching on it for his own glory and gratification.

It’s bad enough that Mom does that to me every few years with her “special day,” now I have the NFL coming in and slowly eradicating it from the memories of all of my fans altogether? Not only is Thursday my birthday, but it's my 50th. And as you may or may not know, that’s the age when red-blooded American male football fans not named Tom Brady stop fantasizing about scoring the game-winning touchdown in the Super Bowl and start fantasizing about scoring the game-winning touchdown in their co-ed recreational flag football league.

Don’t you already have enough, NFL? You own everything. You’ve got Thanksgiving. You’ve got Christmas. You’ve got New Year’s. Heck, your most-recent Super Bowl fell on February 13, which means you practically own Valentine’s Day now (I suppose I should thank you for that).

You own all of March with your free agency. You own all of April with your draft. If an NFL player decides to not show up for OTAs, you own that whole week. Mini-camp takes away June. Training camp devours July and August. Before you know it, it’s September, and you’ve got your little disciples completely under your spell for the next six months.

Is there no birthday or holiday that is sacred to you, NFL?

What about Major League Baseball or the NBA/NHL playoffs? Do we even know who’s playing? No, because of your glorified college graduation known as the NFL Draft followed by the revealing of your “when.”

You are not going to ruin my birthday for me, again, NFL. I plan on eating cake and watching anything but your dog and pony schedule reveal. “But how will you ever know when the Steelers play in 2022?” you may be asking me.

I’ll just Google it 10 seconds later. I might be old and grumpy, but I still know how to use the Internet.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to try and remember why I was so angry when I first started writing this Steelers article.