Football season beats ‘Hallmark’ season in plot suspense

By Ed Daniels, Sports

Well, it is almost time to tell my wife, Robin, goodbye – at least until the Saints season ends early next year.

No more Hallmark Channel movies on Sunday. You know, the ones with the very different plots that keep you spellbound: A woman, who invariably works in a high-rise office in New York, comes back to a small town in the Midwest and meets her old boyfriend.

Within two commercial breaks, they have rekindled the old flame. But, then, with 20 minutes left in the movie, she looks at him and says it is not going to work. He despondently goes back to work in his red barn and later emerges to stare out at the lake as he ponders the fact that he’s once again lost the woman he loves.

But, somehow (miraculously) at 58 minutes after the hour, all is well and they decide to spend the rest of their lives together, happily ever after.

Forget about that from now on. Thank goodness. It is time to get back down to business. As the NFL says, back to football.

The TV show that drives my wife crazy is the eight-box, DirecTV channel 702, where on a Sunday at noon, you can watch eight NFL games at once. To see my wife bewildered cracks me up. While I watch, she gets on the phone with her mother, and tells Judy, for the 100th time this fall, that she can’t wait till the football season is over.

That doesn’t apply to every football season. In January 2010, after Garrett Hartley kicked the Saints into Super Bowl XLIV, my phone rang an hour later. The woman who allegedly hates football told me she was going to the Super Bowl. She was headed to Miami.

At 9 p.m., as I frantically faced a 10 p.m. news deadline, the conversation went like this.

“Honey, when you get a minute can you book my flight and my rental car? I am coming to Miami.”

Me: “Who are you rooming with?”

Silence on the other line.

Our vacation fund, which we had worked diligently to build, suddenly vanished in six beautiful days and nights on South Beach.

“Oh, well,” said she.

So, here we are, 13 years later, in the middle of July, ready to get in a few more days of frivolity before the worst part of the calendar arrives, and it isn’t hurricane season. She knows it’s coming, like a storm brewing on the horizon.

Work all week getting ready for Friday Night Football. Work all day and night on Friday. College football on Saturday. Saints football on Sunday. Very bad mood on Monday morning. I confess. I am tired.

Rinse, repeat.

She hates it; I love it.

The dreaded eight-box, is on its way.

And, I can’t wait.

Ed Daniels is sports director at ABC26 WGNO. He can be reached at ed@nextstar.tv.