The NFL can apparently even change the holidays

Merry Christmas, everyone.
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) September 8, 2013

When I saw this, I got a little nervous.

If today is Christmas, I thought, where is my family? Where is the tree? Where are the presents, and what did I even ask for? Why can't I remember seeing my in-laws last night, and where did we go? What happened when Mrs. Last Honest and I went to England, and where are the photos and videos I took? How was Thanksgiving?

On the other hand, the Christmas-morning weather, especially for Massachusetts, was all kinds of awesome.

Then I realized, silly me, that the "Christmas" being referred to was not actually Dec. 25, but rather the first Sunday of the NFL season. I even managed to figure that out without putting on all 9,000 pregame shows that were on today. I swear, every sports network other than MLB Network, NBA TV and the NHL Network has one, and that's coming, I'm sure.

The national mania surrounding the NFL has fascinated me for several years now. How has a sport grown so much in popularity that it dominates the landscape not just during its season, but 12 months out of the year, to the point where the first Sunday of its schedule is cited as on par with the biggest holiday of the year?

There are probably a lot of factors, but the one that strikes me is that the NFL, over the course of the last 50-plus years, if you want to consider the start date to be when Pete Rozelle was named commissioner in 1960 (or, if you're so inclined, the 1958 NFL Championship game), has built to this point where it has convinced the sporting public, with a lot of help from the media, that everything it does is very important.



Between the draft, free agency, various mini-camps, actual training camps and exhibition games between seasons, there is NFL-related activity pretty much all year, and all of it is treated as vital, and therefore worthy of attention, even above sports whose actual seasons, and in some cases playoffs, are happening at the same time.

Another part of the narrative is that the NFL is very hard, and therefore requires intense preparation and maximum effort at all times all year, in a way not unlike the president has to approach the job. It's to the point where a beloved teammate and team leader being cut is only worth noting briefly, lest it take away any focus on the job at hand.

"When a veteran gets cut, we may discuss it privately amongst ourselves, but there’s no ceremony, no coach’s acknowledgement of the missing man. I never saw Mike collect his things from his locker, and I didn’t get to shake his hand. The next morning, it’s as if no one had ever occupied the locker that once read No. 26. In meetings, the agenda is the same as it was the day before: Win today. And somebody who’s no longer in the room isn’t a part of today."

The end result of the NFL taking itself so seriously and emphasizing the importance of everything attached to it, and making sure everyone knows this, is that the media and therefore the fans treat it the same way. It builds so much anticipation that the games are not events in and of themselves, but culminations, the end results of all that came before.

To be clear, the NFL didn't create this from nothing. Football has been popular for decades, but the NFL has done a masterful, textbook-worthy job of stoking that popularity to the point where it sometimes seems like nothing else matters.