A Replay of the Next NFL Season

Grunting, stunting and punting have already begun, and pretty soon the National Football League season will be going full blast. After five or six months of nice, peaceful baseball, we go back to the game where the winning team is the one with the most touchdowns and field goals and the fewest broken collarbones and pelvises.

Many of us are looking forward to this, but we shouldn’t be. We already know what’s going to happen.

We have seen it all before.

John Madden is going to scribble lines on an Etch-a-Sketch, make X’s, make O’s, draw arrows, create some complicated diagram that looks as if it should be hanging on the refrigerator, and tell us that’s what happened on the last play.

Jim McMahon is going to play a little, recover a little, play a little, recover a little, watch the playoffs from the sideline and sell tacos on TV.

Cleveland is going to play Cincinnati, Cincinnati is going to play Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is going to play Cleveland, and we’re going to swear that they already have played one another five times each.

Gil Brandt of the Dallas Cowboys is going to be quoted in some story in some newspaper about some subject.

Brent Musburger is going to ask an in-studio analyst at halftime whether something that happened in the first half is going to adversely affect the team in the second half, and that person is going to say: “I don’t really think so, but you never can tell.”

A proposed walkout by the NFL Players Assn. is going to be discussed almost daily, but virtually nobody will remember which side Gene Upshaw represents, which side Ed Garvey represents, if either of them represent either side, or if both of them represent the same side.

We are going to watch 4,197 commercials starring Joe Piscopo.

The Goodyear blimp shot of Anaheim Stadium is going to look exactly like the Goodyear blimp shot of Texas Stadium, which looks exactly like the Goodyear blimp shot of RFK Stadium, but at some point the announcer will tell us the pilot’s name, because that is a good thing for us to know.

The Seattle Seahawks are going to wake up one morning with a record of 6-6 and wonder how that’s possible because the team seems to be so much better than a .500 team.

Let’s see, let’s run through those New York Giants again: Lawrence Taylor is the one who is probably the most dominating defensive player in football, Leonard Marshall is the one who is probably the most underrated defensive player in football, and Jim Burt is the defensive player more people should know about.

There will be a very tight close-up of a cheerleader cheering while pretending that she doesn’t know that there is a cameraman with a very large camera kneeling practically between her knees to take her picture.

Controversies will develop over injuries to quarterbacks, instant replay, fan violence, fighting by the players, length of games and steroid use.

Eric Dickerson will sign a contract before a game on a Monday, run for four touchdowns, demand a new contract the next morning, sign a new contract at halftime the next Sunday, discover during the second half that the other team’s halfback makes more money than he does, then demand that his contract be renegotiated during overtime.

Sweetness Payton will dodge interviews and then whine about not getting enough publicity.

We will be forced to watch one of those old NFL films with Lynn Swann catching that same pass or Garo Yepremian throwing that same pass, narrated, as usual, by the Man Who Makes Everything Sound Important.

Vince Lombardi once again will be spoken about in God-like terms by somebody who still cannot come to grips with the fact that all he was was a guy who coached football.

A customer asks for a light at a bar, and the bartender gives him some kind of light! Which is so funny it makes us thirsty!

The referee gets knocked down accidentally during the play.

The defensive back gets called for pass interference, but during the slow-motion replay, the announcer gets to say: “Oooh, I don’t know about that . . . “

In other scores around the league today, Minnesota is leading Detroit, 3-0.

Bill Walsh is a genius. Buddy Ryan is tough. Mike Ditka is funny. Don Shula is probably the best there is. Tom Landry is a legend. Bill Parcells is looking out for that bucket. Chuck Knox is a heck of a coach. Chuck Noll is a heck of a coach. At Minnesota, the coach is still trying to fill some big shoes.

These Denver fans are really something, aren’t they? I tell ya. It’s like having a 12th man on the field. It really is.

And you can’t leave these Miami receivers open for a second.

This place is absolute pandemonium. This place is absolute bedlam. This crowd is going absolutely crazy.

This young man is really going to be a football player.

The Steel Curtain. The Purple Gang. The Orange Crush. The Big Red. The Silver and Black. The Hogs. The Junkyard Dogs.

We won’t really know until we look at the films.

We have seen it all before, and we are going to see it all again. But don’t worry. Somebody is bound to come up with arena baseball.