Coming Soon! The Weekly NFL Picks Are Back!

I hold in my hand the envelope. As a child of four can plainly see, this envelope has been hermetically sealed.  It has been kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall's porch since noon today.  NO ONE knows the contents of the envelope... but The Bird... who in his mystical and borderline divine way, will ascertain the answers.

 

 

Calling all fans of football! In less than a fortnight it all starts again!

With parched mouths we have crawled through the dog days of summer.  We've scaled that God-awful sports void that lies between Major League Baseball's All Star Break and College Football's "Week Zero" kickoff, wherein we break the seal with such classics as UTEP vs. New Mexico St. and Nebraska's annual game against The Abilene School for the Little Sisters of the Poor. Actually this year the Big Red scheduled Illinois and promptly (and gloriously) got their asses kicked.

Either way, unless you enjoy the penultimate months of MLB's way-too-long regular season, or cheer on the Fighting Illini, there is no worse time on the calendar for sports fans than right now.  NFL fans especially. As Clark Griswold once carped after trudging through the desert with his pants on his head: "I'm so hungry I could eat a sandwich from a gas station."

The Bird stumbles through the last stretch of NFL fans' most barren wasteland: July and August. Thirsty, if not dying, for the quench of the Sunday gridiron.

 

Alas, I even watched three weeks of the European Soccer Championship just so I could say I partook in some type of "football" viewing this summer. I was so ashamed afterward that I asked a neighbor to red card me.

I miss Terry and Howie.

Fear not, however! Toss the rubbish of Euro football and Simone Biles-less Olympics into the pragmatic trash heap of insatiable exhibits of sports viewing. NFL football is back!

Come with me, to a place where the picks flow like wine.  Where Sunday morning armchair quarterbacks instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  That's right.  I'm talking about a little place called... The Bird Droppings.

For those who have suppressed the trauma of reading the Bird Droppings way back in your youth, this was once the place to obtain every ounce of knowledge necessary to go into your NFL weekend beaming with all the same confidence as Deshaun Watson in a massage parlor.  And now that sports betting is legal in all the cool states, plus West Virginia, you are encouraged once again to turn to the Bird's prognostications and bank a little coin along the way.

If you're completely new, then welcome!  Each week we will examine the match ups (against the spread for some added resplendence) as well as review, pontificate, and poke fun of the season's trends and story lines as they unfold.  The occasional soliloquy about the affairs of my Denver Broncos is also likely to show up from time to time for the amusement of all who read.

So put on your eye black and let’s go!  Names are being sewn on jerseys as we speak.  End zone paint is being applied on fields across the land.  And Bill Belichick has replenished his stock of hoodies and hemorrhoid cream.

No masks required.  The Bird is ready for some football...  Are you?