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A Christmas wish

Some stories start off sad and end up happy.

Some stories start off happy and end up sad.

**Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

Then there are those stories that blend tears with smiles, and you find yourself trying to write the ending.

That leads me to another Christmas Day, and another decision to make about how I choose to feel about it.

Do I pick Christmas Day, 1994, or Christmas Day, 1970?

Is it really even my choice to make?

See, on December 25, 1994, my dad died. Just weeks earlier he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and by December 20 he was already in hospice care.

I was with him when he passed away, cringing as I watched him struggle to breathe and staring at a clock that showed 3:12 p.m. when the breathing stopped.

It was the worst day of my life.

Like many people I grapple with severe depression and man, oh man, did that event start a freefall. Pop was my best friend and my hero, and suddenly he was gone.

And it happened on Christmas Day.

So, are you sufficiently bummed out yet? Can’t blame you. That tale is quite the buzz-harsher.

Please try to bear with me, though, because things get better – even though I thought they never would.

I spent a long time “celebrating” every Christmas Day by reliving the one from 1994 – the one that saw part of my world end.

But as Christmas Day, 2022, is at hand, my mind no longer goes back to 1994, but to 1970.

I was a kid, one who had been mesmerized by the New York Jets’ win over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. While Joe Namath and company wouldn’t recapture the magic again, they were cemented as my favorite team. And all I wanted for Christmas was a department store New York Jets football uniform (complete with plastic helmet, jersey, pants and shoulder pads).

I made this request quite clear.

“Pop, I sure would like a New York Jets football uniform for Christmas,” I said.

If you’ve ever read me before you know my father was a Green Bay Packers fan, so his response was colored by green and yellow instead of green and white.

“You mean you don’t want a number 15 Packers uniform?” he said with a grin. “You’d look good dressed up like Bart Starr.”

I guess I knew he was kidding, although I couldn’t be sure. And had I torn open a package containing a yellow helmet with a big “G” on the side, I would’ve still been happy. I loved the man dearly, so he could’ve gifted me with a rock and it would’ve been just the rock I had always hoped for.

But of course, it was a Jets kit, courtesy of our friends at J.C. Penny. As far as presents go, it was the best one, from the best dad (who was also my best friend).

And it happened on Christmas Day.

So, I suppose now you’re wondering how I’m able to make my memory default from that awful Christmas to my happiest one.

That’s a good question, and a fair one.

Depression – or at least the way it affects me – is akin to being attacked by a gang of demons that vary in size and strength from day to day (and sometimes moment to moment). When you’re lucky, you can brush them back with a broom.

When you’re not, they will absolutely beat you senseless.

I guess one Christmas Day I just got tired of getting my butt kicked.

So, instead of waking up preparing to be overwhelmed with a profound feeling of loss, I concentrated really, really hard and tried to remember the healthy, happy Pop – the one who lived, not the one who died.

And the more I dug deep into my memory, the more I realized as happy as I was forcing a green jersey over shoulder pads and squeezing into that Jets lid, he was even happier. It was a great day for me, but a great day for him, too. That shared moment now seems more like a treasure, because it is a treasure.

And this season, that brings me comfort and joy.

Look, much of what I’m rambling on about sounds trite; I’m acutely aware we can’t always take our mind where we want it to go. Some days, the sadness is so overwhelming we can barely move. I mean, if we knew how to rid ourselves of depression we’d all do it, right?

Knowing that, I can’t promise you that next Christmas my ruminations won’t revert back to December 25, 1994, at 3:12 p.m.

What I can tell you, though, is that time – and the knowledge that there are caring people everywhere – has helped me give far more weight to my best Christmas than my worst one.

And that nasty gang of demons? Well, sometimes they’ll win.

But other times, they won’t.

And what I hope you take from this is that I know how you feel, regardless of what you feel today and what you might feel tomorrow. There is help available, and sometimes we all need it.

So, this holiday season, I wish you strength and send you love and light. If you look hard enough, maybe you’ll find your own version of a Jets uniform under the tree.

Because things can get better, even though you might think they never will.

If you’re struggling and need help, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org/chat.

In my opinion …

The only certainties in life are death, taxes and people getting their undergarments in a twist when discussing the College Football Playoff.

Folks can sit back and passively watch the world burn around them, but they’ll start screaming and frothing at the mouth if you think your team deserved a spot in the field more than theirs.

But every sports fan has an opinion on it, and the Sports Fan’s Handbook demands that we are obligated to share that opinion.

So, what do I think about the 2022 CFP seeding (1. Georgia, 2. Michigan, 3. TCU, 4. Ohio State) ?

Meh.

There are 131 Football Bowl Subdivision teams and 10 conferences. Having just four teams vie for a championship is, shall we say … lacking. Certainly, it beats the old Bowl Championship Series (which beats the old Bowl Alliance, which beats the old Bowl Coalition, which beats the old days of awarding “mythical” national championships). But as I’ve said and written many times, four participants mean you have an invitational, not a playoff.

Hearing folks cuss and discuss it amuses me, though.

Alabama fans are mad that a one-loss Ohio State team made it in over their two-loss team.

“But they got smoked at home by Michigan, 45-23, and our losses came on the last play of regulation (52-49 to Tennessee) and overtime (32-31 to LSU).”

I respond with, “Tennessee and Alabama have the same record and the Vols beat the Tide head-to-head, so shouldn’t they get in over Alabama?”

The return argument is that Tennessee was badly beaten by South Carolina, 63-38.

But …

Tennessee dismantled LSU 40-13 in Baton Rouge, and LSU beat Bama in Death Valley. The Tide didn’t play the Gamecocks, so who’s to say they wouldn’t have suffered a similar fate?

And what about Clemson? The Tigers are 11-2, and they won the ACC Championship Game.

Then there’s Tulane, which also finished 11-2 and claimed the AAC title. Oh, and the Green Wave defeated Big 12 champ Kansas State in Manhattan during the regular season.

Ohio State, Alabama and Tennessee didn’t even win the divisions of their respective conferences.

Before you start pelting me with debris, keep in mind I’m not advocating for any team; I truly couldn’t care less. That said, if you had to pick four under the current guidelines, I don’t have a problem with the four that were picked.

Thing is, fans can justify in their minds whatever narrative works best for their favorite sons.

And it’s always bugged me that in a four-team playoff, league championship contests only matter when the CFP wants them to matter.

If LSU had upset Georgia, the Bulldogs would’ve still made the playoffs but a three-loss LSU team – the SEC champions – would not.

And look at K-State. They have a nice trophy, but the team they beat last Saturday (TCU) is in the CFP while they get the consolation prize of playing in the Sugar Bowl.

Fortunately, there’ll be just one more season for the teams who finish fifth and sixth in the CFP pre-bowl rankings to whine. Starting in 2024, it’ll be the 13^th and 14^th-place schools that’ll get to bitch and moan because the field will be tripled to 12.

Obviously, that’ll be a lot closer to a playoff than what we have now and overall, I think it’s a positive change.

The format will feature the six highest ranked conference champions plus the next six highest ranked teams in the CFP poll.

Seeds one through four will receive first round byes, while seeds five through eight will host first round games. The quarterfinals and semis will be played in traditional bowls, followed by the CFP Championship Game.

Although flawed, I find a lot to like with this setup … perhaps because I, too, am flawed. Conference championship games will truly matter again, and as a fan of a Group of 5 school (UAB, which heads to the American Athletic Conference in 2023) there is realistic CFP access for mid-majors. It’s not as good as the Football Championship Subdivision’s 24-team playoff, but it’ll do.

Now, what gets the four-team playoff supporters spitting and convulsing is this whole “access” argument.

“You’ll be putting teams in who don’t deserve it!” they shout. “This is just about money!”

Well, yeah, of course it’s about money. I didn’t think that was a secret.

As for expanding the field with teams that – on paper – have little shot at winning it all, I think that’s great. It’s one of the beauties of tournament play.

When the UMBC Retrievers made the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in 2018, they had no realistic chance of winning the national championship. But they became the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 seed with a 74-54 beatdown of Virginia.

If only bluebloods had been allowed in the field, something as monumental as that would’ve never happened. And merely being in a championship chase has value.

Isn’t that part of what competition is all about, giving an underdog a chance to punch above their weight?

Once the CFP grows to 12 the last team in on Selection Sunday will usually be the first team out on First Round Saturday, but that won’t always be the case.

There’ll come a time when a Sun Belt team beats an SEC team in December. Outcomes like that make the playoffs a whole lot more interesting to me.

And while we discuss the merits of any postseason, it should be noted that tournaments don’t necessarily determine the best team, only the best team in that particular competition.

I joked last week that if you really wanted to crown a true champion in the FBS, the schools would need to play a round-robin, 130-game schedule. Then at the end, the one with the best record would be the undisputed king of the hill.

So sure, with a 12-team playoff you’ll have schools that probably don’t “belong.” But no one knows for sure until and unless they get the chance.

And I’d rather have a bigger tourney that includes pretenders than an invitational that excludes contenders.

But, that’s just my opinion …

Remembering NFL Europa

History will be made on Sunday when the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers tangle at Allianz Arena in Munich.

For the National Football League, it’ll mark its first regular season game played on German soil.

And for German fans, it’ll be a chance to ask, “What took you so long?”

While tackle football’s most prestigious league has made England its primary international stop for several years, a strong German fan base has been there for decades. All you have to do is look back at NFL Europe, which began as the World League of American Football but spent its final season as NFL Europa – with five of its six franchises located in Germany.

“It’s ubiquitous in Germany,” Brett Gosper, NFL Head of United Kingdom and Europe, told the Daily Mail in September. “When I visit, I always get the feeling you talk to the taxi drivers about NFL – but here (London) not quite. As a sport maybe it scratches an itch that other sports don’t in that market. Rugby is not a big game in that market – there is not another contact sport. There’s a lot of professional sports kicking around in England, from cricket, to rugby, to football, and so on. And NFL still finds its way in that competitive landscape.

“But in Germany, there just seems to be a wider possibility to come in and occupy a space that maybe is not occupied by someone else.”

Alexander Steinforth of NFL Germany was interviewed by the Ran sports website in July and said there had been more than three million ticket requests for the game set for the 75,024-seat venue. He knew tickets would be in high demand, he just couldn’t imagine how high.

“Based on the roughly 600,000 registrations for this pre-sale in the past few weeks, we could already guess a bit in advance,” he said. “At the peak, however, there were around 800,000 people in the virtual queue at the same time. Ticketmaster informed us afterwards that they could have sold around three million tickets. There would be such a demand worldwide – whether at sporting events or concerts – otherwise only at the Super Bowl.

“Thus, this advance sale for the NFL Germany game has once again exceeded all expectations.”

So, where did this passion for the gridiron game begin?

The WLAF, which hit the field in the spring of 1991, featured three European teams – the Barcelona Dragons, Frankfurt Galaxy and London Monarchs. Eight of the nine other franchises were located in the United States with one in Canada.

The Monarchs drew 40,483 fans per game during the inaugural season, followed by Frankfurt (29,856) and Barcelona (29,002). By year two London’s attendance slipped to 21,909 per home outing while Frankfurt’s grew to 36,293. Barcelona played before 30,756 during home dates.

However, poor TV ratings, subpar attendance in North American markets and mounting financial losses convinced the NFL to suspend the World League after the 1992 campaign and examine what options were left for a developmental circuit.

The option was to go across the pond, and the WLAF returned in 1995 with an all-European lineup. Frankfurt, Barcelona and London resumed operations, and were joined by the Amsterdam Admirals, Rhein Fire and Scottish Claymores.

By 1998 the NFL’s spring gridiron experiment had changed its name to NFL Europe, and the London Monarchs were renamed the England Monarchs (playing in Birmingham and Bristol as well as London).

Yet while the novelty of minor league American football began to fade in England, Spain and Scotland, German clubs continued to have plenty of support.

The England team folded in 1998, Barcelona called it quits in 2003, and Scotland’s last year in NFL Europe was in 2004.

The lineup in 2005 featured Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Rhein, meaning NFL Europe was – for all practical purposes – NFL Germany Plus One.

Rebranded as NFL Europa for its final season in 2007, the six teams averaged 20,24 fans per game – the highest per game attendance since the league was rebooted in 1995.

The farewell year saw Frankfurt draw 33,043 each game, followed by Rhein (24,473), Hamburg (20,874), Berlin (15,710), Cologne (14,352) and Amsterdam (11,668).

Despite the strong support from German fans, the NFL was losing $30 million per year on the league and decided to dramatically alter its European presence and fold NFL Europa on June 29, 2007.

“A foundation of American football fans in key European markets has been created and the time is right to shift our strategy,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said. “The next phase of our international growth is to focus on initiatives with global impact, including taking advantage of developing technologies that make the NFL more accessible on a global scale and ensuring the success of our new international series of regular-season games.”

The Galaxy was the only franchise in WLAF/NFL Europe/NFL Europa to compete in all 15 seasons and had the most titles with four.

“NFL Europa has created thousands of passionate fans who have supported that league and our sport for many years,” Mark Waller, senior vice president of NFL International, said. “And we look forward to building on this foundation as we begin this new phase of our international development.” And part of that new phase means that 15 years after NFL Europa showcased Germany, the NFL is finally showcasing a regular season clash there.