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Mid-July usually means the doldrums of summer lift with the anticipation of the coming new football season. For hardcore fans, this comes in the form of training camp and the various news it brings with your respective teams. The first look at that blue chip rookie prospect drafted last April, the return of the team veterans, the arrival of the newly minted free agent signing, Hard Knocks on HBO, and the next episode of the T.O. Show (highly recommended by the way) all compromise the rituals associated with training camp season. Rabid fans could even take this a step further and use training camp as a launching pad to scout potential fantasy football players for their leagues. More on that special, uniquely obsessive hobby for guys at a later juncture.

No offense to baseball, but the dog days of summer mostly see their time spent with friends and family grilling outdoors, enjoying the lake, beach or whatever vacation hotspot that attracts the individual looking for a respite from the real world. Sure, baseball’s tradition etches itself into summer plans when taking in a weekend game, or catching a day game with one’s kids among other options. However the fact remains that American football remains king when considering pure attendance, TV ratings, setting aside your whole Saturday for the huge slate of college games only to also lounge your Sundays afternoons away with NFL games.

As summer lends itself to time spent outdoors, the cool crisp fall season and the unforgiving winter period naturally draws us inside around our TVs for football (with the exception of tailgate parties of course). The fact that the football season lasts only 17 weeks, 16 games, and roughly 5 months extenuates its most enduring trait: short and sweet. As much as I love the NBA and the MLB (82 and 162 game seasons, respectively), they drag on as the season wears along only to draw the most interest when the playoffs roll around. As a culture that values the here and now, sacrificing our attention span to whatever happens to catch our ADD-addled brains at that very moment, why prolong a good thing?

There are rumblings that Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to extend the season by two games and possibly add one of those two extra games on the docket for an international neutral site for two teams to play (akin to the past two seasons where one game was played in England). Saving the prospect of football games played overseas for another time, consider the possibility of a longer NFL season. Once upon a time, the Super Bowl consistently landed on the last Sunday of every January firmly establishing it as the definitive artificial American holiday. Now due to schedule overloads, and the desire to take two weeks off between Conference Championships and the Super Bowl, this has pushed Super Sunday to early February. At the rate we’re headed, the Super Bowl will be played in March right before Spring Break. In my understated opinion, that’s just preposterous. There’s a reason we as emotionally charged sports fans enjoy something more the longer it’s not around. How can we miss something if it doesn’t allow us to miss it by disappearing for a while?

My plea to deaf ears concludes with the hope that football stays scarce as its shear entertaining value lies in the fact that we cherish it more in the short time we are able to enjoy screaming like orangutans at the TV rooting for our team; yet also pining for the opposing team’s running back to gain 10 more yards for that elusive point to win that week’s head-to-head matchup in our fantasy football league.