On The Eve Of The Week One In The NFL Season: My Ode To NFL Redzone

Tomorrow is going to be an awesome day.

I know this because I love football and tomorrow is the first Sunday of the NFL season. I make a bit deal of it every year. I tend to speak in excessive hyperbole every time football season rolls around and I make no apologies for that. I don’t care if I sound like some crazed sports fan. I just love football that much.

For the next several months, I plan on building my entire Sunday afternoons around watching NFL football. That’s only going to make every weekend more awesome by default. The only thing that could make it better is if I found a beautiful woman who loves watching football on Sundays as much as I do.

However, on the eve of the first Sunday of the first week of the NFL season, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge something that has played a huge part in my love of football. That something is a wonderful little innovation the NFL created in 2009 called NFL RedZone.

To the uninitiated or uninformed, NFL RedZone is a cable TV channel that plays from 1:00 p.m. EST to 8:00 p.m. EST every Sunday during every week of the NFL regular season. It basically cycles through every game, covering every touchdown and focusing on games in which a team is close to scoring. It skips all commercials and makes it a point to capture every big moment from every game that Sunday.

I cannot overstate how much this channel has enhanced my football watching experience. Basically, I just tune into the channel at 1:00 p.m. as soon as I have my pizza and beer ready. Then, I don’t need to change the channel or touch anything on my TV for the next seven hours. That seven hours is basically the fan equivalent of football Heaven.

Yes, it does cost extra to get and it’s not cheap, either.

I still pay it gladly every year because it’s worth every penny.

Before NFL RedZone, I still loved watching football. It was just difficult to keep up with all the action. I could only ever watch two games on a Sunday afternoon, plus the Sunday night game. I still enjoyed it, but it was somewhat limited. If even just one of those games was a blowout or not a very intriguing match-up, I might just turn my TV off and do something else.

It was often hit-or-miss, but with more hits than misses. Then, once I discovered NFL RedZone, every Sunday became a hit. I got to see everything the NFL had to offer every Sunday. I could follow teams and players I couldn’t usually follow. It was like going from a tricycle to a Lamborghini. After that fateful first experience, I’ve built my NFL Sundays around it and I haven’t looked back.

I plan to do the same tomorrow. I plan to teach my future children how to experience it, as well. I hope to share the joys of NFL RedZone on Sunday afternoons with whoever enters my life. It’s a hell of a feeling and one I look forward to every year.

Now, the wait is almost over.

Tomorrow, the season begins and NFL RedZone will be my guide.

I can’t wait.

I am so ready for some football.

To all my fellow football fans out there, I hope you experience the same joy tomorrow afternoon that I hope to experience.