Fine line between hobby and mental illness By Dr. Cheeks
Special to NFL.com
(Dr. Cheeks will offer his own take on what’s happening in the NFL world each week from now through the end of the season. He arrives from HBO’s Inside the NFL, where he contributed his online commentary for the past two seasons.)
(Aug. 20, 2004) -- Though Dave Barry is not a football expert by any stretch, his quote would probably apply to most of us football fans. There is indeed a fine line between showing some mental instability and being a football fan, but if you share that same "illness" with millions of fans across the nation, aren't we all just "normal?" Well, probably not, but that's a good try.
I am here to tell you that I have a hard time drawing the line in just about every walk of life, but when it comes to the wacky world of the NFL, we all need occasional guidance. I hope I can offer you some of my seasonal survival techniques over the course of the next few months (in addition to many relevant and irrelevant stories, tidbits and other items you may have missed while reading about football in the merely 30 different newspapers, newsletters, web sites and fan blogs every week).
So let me begin with a tale of how one man deals with the offseason blues, and what follows when training camp finally arrives.
No, I don't watch old football follies videos or even the Chargers-Dolphins 1981 divisional playoff tape I bought on eBay. I utilize a technique that every other warm-blooded American man or woman should when they can't emotionally handle a certain situation -- repression. That's right. When the national sports scene is so bleak and boring in the early months of summer, and weeks still remain until football training camps open, I just pretend that everything else in the world matters for a little while. I like to refer to this sensation as "Intentional Football Repression."
Most of you probably can't resist buying those fantasy football magazines originally published in April. You know, the colorful ones that stay on the newsstands longer than the July edition of Vanity Fair with the shirtless David Beckham that forced me to keep my shirt on all summer at the beach.
Feel free to share your thoughts and insights with Dr. Cheeks at cheekspeaks@yahoo.com. Help ease his transition from HBO.com to NFL.com. Besides the fact that these supposed preview magazines still list Vinny Testaverde as a free agent and Ricky Williams as the third-rated running back in the NFL, they are harmful to your mental health because they make you get excited too early in the offseason. There's plenty of time to get into the right frame of mind, and if you start in the dog days of summer, you'll lose focus way too early. If you don't know why, you will understand when I show you the ways that your life starts to change as you embrace the upcoming season.
When one is in "Intentional Football Repression," he or she must literally do anything possible to keep the blinders on in order to keep the football world shut out until training camp begins in late July (and this year it really was late July). It is hard not to get caught up in the draft hoopla and ensuing minicamps in the spring, but after that, all dies down in mid-June as you reach the only true dead point of the football year. Even the NFL head coaches go on vacation for a week or two in late June and early July. These manic men, if you believe most accounts, log fewer hours of sleep and work harder than even the president of the most powerful country in the world (I mean, go figure).
I can't figure out if the NFL players are capable of employing "Intentional Football Repression" before training camp. It must have been difficult for them to ignore their own impending physical pain. I remember literally being as scared as Saddam Hussein in a spider hole the week before high school football training camp, and I would venture to say those camps are a tad easier than two-a-days with taskmasters like new Giants coach Tom Coughlin.
Don't forget that Vinny Testaverde is no longer a free agent.
Some players, like Williams, might have ignored the upcoming season just a little too much, and as a result may wind up "somewhere in Asia." Or if you are Quincy Carter, you just may find yourself out of a starting quarterback job and looking for a new team for one alleged reason or another. Remember that football is only a hobby for the fans, fellas. Also remember that sometimes your "hobbies" can get in the way of playing football.
Some former players, like Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, try to repress football for three years, then find out they can't ignore the game completely. Supposedly Sanders is considering a return to the playing field with the Baltimore Ravens, who have quickly become the modern-day version of the "Bad Boys" of the 1970s, the Oakland Raiders (except these purple jail birds seem to have more players in trouble with the law than even those wild Raiders did).
All we can do is beg you, Deion. "Please come back!" The Ravens are already fun to root against. It also gives me one more thing to talk about this season, which will come in handy in, oh, about two weeks. I digress.
So this year, I successfully dodged most football discussion until that final week before the training camps opened. Suddenly, one day it happened. Like a flash of lightning from the football gods, the football fever struck me right between the eyes. I found myself naturally doing the Billy "White Shoes" Johnson touchdown dance followed by my patented Priest Holmes jig.
Does this sound familiar? Just as if you were born to do so, you suddenly find yourself checking web sites that you haven't been visited since January (well, maybe a peek or two), e-mailing long-lost friends that you haven't talked to since February just to check in and to lob a taunt or two. And you might even monitor a fantasy football draft online. Of course, none of this takes place on company time, just as I'm sure you are not reading this article at work but only during your designated nightly "Internet hour" in the privacy of your own home.
I'll throw out a few more hypothetical thoughts and plans that start to rise from within once the blinders are lifted off your head. You begin thinking about trips to cities in remote places like Cleveland and Miami. You wonder how you can possibly cram all your future weekend activities in on a Saturday. You think that this might be the year you finally go to Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Of course, you imagine how good your fantasy football team is really going to be even before you have drafted any players and how this year will be different.
You probably start to realize that you're not going to get better at golf no matter how many times you play. You even start to categorize your friends and love interests into two groups: "Enablers" and "Linebackers." The Enablers are like your lead blockers as they guide you to a sports bar each Sunday to watch 12 hours of football and stuff you with food and beverage. The Linebackers are there to jam you up at the line like Ray Lewis stuffing Eddie George as they invite you to Sunday brunches or even throw weddings on the holiest of days, a football Sunday.
You may try to figure out if this is finally the time in your life after 12 straight years that you cannot in good conscience purchase the latest Madden football video game. You might give up on completing your only book of the summer that happens to be about the 1986 New York Mets. Again, these are all hypothetical scenarios (as far as you know) and maybe you've experienced more than one.
Do you see why you have to wait?
Let me recap. Ignore … then embrace. Hibernate … then emerge. If you are still in an offseason slumber, it is now officially time to snap out of it. I won't even get into preparing for a fantasy football draft because that is a whole different phenomenon, which I will discuss in the next few weeks.
Some of you may have read some of my work on HBO.com. If you did, I am quite impressed. You may have noticed that I could not speak poorly of any of the esteemed hosts of Inside the NFL. Well, those shackles are off (although I'm still scared of Bob Costas). Now I'm working for the "man," as they say, and I can no longer lament how I still can't watch the NFL Network in my humble abode in New York City or how it is still a bit bizarre that the Super Bowl will be hosted by Jacksonville and Detroit the next two years.
It shouldn't be a problem because we all know there is not much to complain about in the NFL, right? It is American nature to moan even on the brightest of days, but there is nothing really to whine about this time of year. Every team starts fresh. Every fan's prospects for both their NFL and fantasy teams are grand. Every new columnist starts with an optimistic, cheerful column!
Now if you will excuse me, I think I will continue to tackle the demons of the upcoming football season. Man, it's going to be rough.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/7597338 
