The Feast Begins

The weekends are full of time, which means it's also easy for them to slip away.

We live in an era where it's never been easier to pick up a new hobby, or follow a new sport, and, once again, watch time slip. What keeps our attention, and for how long? How do you fill in knowledge, analysis, and history gaps? If you pay for a subscription to a publication, isn't that the same as reading it? No? Hmm.

This week, with the NFL season in full swing, Rob and Patrick mull how they spend their weekends watching the world's greatest athletes race cars and throw footballs and mull what it means to be "effective" during a period where you should be allowed to be lazy.

Rob: Last year, I remember Austin proposed a name for this time of year: The Feast. It’s the playoffs in MLB and WNBA, the football season is through its creaky opening weeks and most teams are still approaching their peak condition and preparation, some soccer leagues are nearing the crescendo and others are just getting started, the auto racing seasons are in their final stages, and somewhere in all this the NBA and NHL are going to start up again. If you are into sports of almost any type, early autumn is one of the greatest times of year as well as one of the most challenging to keep up with.

There are times I feel almost burdened by how much my love of sports is being indulged this time of year. A typical Sunday might start with an F1 race in the morning and proceed smoothly into a day of NFL games until deep into the evening. That might be more than 12 hours of sports! Thing is, I don’t really have 12 hours in a weekend where I can just sit on the couch petting dogs and watching sports. There’s too many other things that I also value: giving those dogs a walk, tackling projects around the house, playing games, catching up on reading…I almost wish I could run the day twice, enjoying one version of Sunday where I just soak up the games and races I want to see, and then after a nice rest tackling the Sunday where I spend most of the day enjoying other hobbies and getting out of the house with my family.

There have been times I’ve split the difference a bit by reading and playing games while keeping sports on in the background. Turn-based games are pretty fantastic for slower parts of an event. Still, I struggle with the sense that when I’m “multitasking” between watching the Bears or an F1 race and playing a video games, I’m not really following anything particularly well. There are few things I find more frustrating than looking up and realizing I have no idea why the scoreboard has changed, or pulling my gaze back to an article to see a completely unfamiliar passage in front of me.

You keep a pretty busy schedule between work and family obligations, but you also follow Chicago sports and the NFL more broadly pretty well. I am curious, how do you tackle this kind of year? Do you just force yourself to make some firm choices about what you’re engaging with, or do you find you’re able to juggle your attention from sports to other pursuits without chafing?

Patrick: I’ve gotten pretty lucky. You can’t pick your family and you can’t pick your neighbors. It wasn’t until COVID-19 that my children became friendly with the neighborhood kids during an era when their options were hanging out with us or hanging outside. Those friendships lasted beyond the most intense parts of social isolation and we became friends with the parents in the process. The strongest of those relationships is with one couple in particular, and guess what? They love drinking beer and watching football all day. Our Sunday ritual is getting together with them, letting the kids run wild, and enjoying our afternoon. It’s very easy to imagine a different version of my life where I’m far more hands-on during Sundays, or required to be out of the house to keep them entertained, and I’m that dad sneaking in a few minutes here or there on their YouTube TV app to figure out why the Bills game has flipped scores.

We used to time my eight-year-old’s naps with the start of Bears game! Oh, honey, are you rubbing your eyes? Could you have taken a nap at 11:00 am? I’m sorry, but we’re going to find a way to keep you up for another hour, so that we can ensure your nap at least takes us through halftime. But my kids broadly don’t take naps anymore, so instead, the world has blessed me with Sundays where my primary obligation is asking my neighbor to change the Sunday Ticket lineup on his second garage TV and, if I’m lucky, to pick up my four-year-old and run her around the yard when the Bears actually manage to score a touchdown.