I sat at the table. Alone. The lights were off. There was only the glow of the laptop screen.
I didn’t want to move.
I’ve had nights like this before. The lyric from the song “Some Nights” by fun. comes to mind, where it begins, “Some nights, I stay up cashing in my bad luck. Some nights, I call it a draw.” That one speaks to me and probably anyone who has had a bad beat that leaves them staring blankly ahead wondering why luck refused to step in just one more time.
That wasn’t this night.
Over the years, I’ve weaned myself off of the self-pity that comes from bad beats and tough weeks. Really, when I was struggling with my worst against-the-spread season ever — 2016 — I spent more of these blank-stare nights distraught over the amount of people I let down. That was the problem. I knew I’d get over the losses, but I didn’t know if others would. It pained me, and it worried me for the future where all of my efforts would be erased because of my success rate. Or lack thereof.
I sent out a survey at the end of that season. I didn’t get many responses, but I did get an answer for the most important question. I asked something like, “How much more important is my success rate than my writing?” That wasn’t the exact phrasing, but stick with me.
From those who answered, the vast majority assured me that my writing actually mattered more. Sure, everyone wanted to win, but that’s not why they read my column. They generally liked either my approach or my delivery.
Those people weren’t lying. Pretty much all of them have remained members to this day.
Pause the story. If you were one of those people who answered the survey honestly, I owe you my sincere gratitude. I have never forgotten those answers and I lean on them whenever I’m down. Thank you.
Resume.
The confirmation that my writing was valuable helped me get over the down year. It reminded me that my method or approach or insight or whatever is most important. And then I was further confirmed that sticking with said method or approach or insight or whatever actually was successful. We went right back to winning.
Every so often, we’ll get a bad beat. I can vividly remember the Chiefs scoring a meaningless special teams touchdown with no time left on the clock to give us an against-the-spread loss, and my immediate reaction was to laugh instead of cry. Just think about how important of a mental shift that was.
Sadly, on this night, in particular, I did want to cry. But I couldn’t. Even tears were missing.
The only thing I felt in this moment was emptiness.
I sat at my table and looked at my computer screen, knowing that I had no reason to write.
There were no sports.
I’ve certainly been known to over-dramatize things in the past — it’s what writers do, leave me alone! — but I was actually trying to downplay this one. I didn’t want to feel this way. I was fortunate enough that my family was quarantining safely and I was able to work from home. Everywhere else, I was happy. But, in a truly honest moment, I was lost without sports.
The craziest part of this distraught feeling is that I never actually worried about the NFL season. It was too far away for me to even consider it a loss. This was the emptiness that came about from a lack of regular, everyday competition.
Sports are the white noise we didn’t know kept us sane, and their absence made them more noticeable than their presence. Turning off the lights to then realize it was dark.
This night stretched for days. Then weeks. It was a hole that I couldn’t fill myself. I still wrote every day, and I used the time to work on some other writing skills — namely, fiction — but it was practice for a game that wasn’t even scheduled.
Eventually, the announcements came. In trickles. In bunches. It didn’t matter. One sport was attempting a comeback. Then another. Then all of them. The hole started to fill and I allowed myself to welcome the return. Sure, I could get burned, but I relish excitement. It leads to passion, and anything that generates passion is worth doing.
I started writing about sports. I started flying through daily morning thoughts of the upcoming baseball games. I started posting them on Twitter. I started writing some articles for FantasyPros. I started buying my football magazines. I started researching.
I stopped feeling lost.
There’s a line between people who ‘get’ sports and people who watch sports. That line is thick. It doesn’t really allow movement in either direction. If you cross-over into one, you’re there for awhile.
I run a comparatively small website in which I can give my unfiltered thoughts on anything. I’m supposed to keep it confined to football picks, but I’m not really supposed to do anything. I’ve been lucky that I’ve had that sort of free reign anywhere I’ve written — to name a few: Go! Gaming Giant, XN Sports, FantasyPros, and even when my articles were featured on AOL Sports. It’s another pillar of support for the “content reigns supreme” argument.
Still, in my small section of a massive industry, I’ve also found something for which writers endlessly search: readers. You. Those people who both ‘get‘ sports and enjoy my writing. The combination.
I write about this on every Thanksgiving week, but you must know that it takes on a special role in 2020. This year, we’ve all had something. Maybe it’s small. Maybe it’s catastrophic. Maybe it’s over-dramatized by a writer. Whatever it was, it was something.
Maybe, deep down, my feeling of emptiness was a fear for the future. Maybe it was the fear that I would miss the opportunity to write 20-something weeks of NFL content for people who would actually read it.
Maybe, I missed you.
For all the years of support, the kind emails, the tweets, and the time it takes for you to read these columns, thank you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
-Mario
Below are predictions for each game against the spread. Spreads have been taken from various websites and are subject to change. The spread in parenthesis denotes the selected team. An asterisk denotes a confidence pick.
*Confidence Picks – 2020 Season: 31-29-2 (Last Week: 2-3)
(2019 Season: 57-43-3) (2018 Season: 63-48-4) (2017 Season: 53-48-4) (2016 Season: 53-67-3) (2015 Season: 69-45-2) (2014 Season: 61-46-2) (6-Year Total: 356-297-18)
All Picks Against Spread – 2020 Season: 81-77-3 (Last Week: 9-5)
(2019 Season: 142-118-7) (2018 Season: 137-118-12) (2017 Season: 137-119-11) (2016 Season: 123-136-8) (2015 Season: 143-117-7) (2014 Season: 149-114-4) (6-Year Total: 831-722-49)
Houston Texans at Detroit Lions
Putting my football fandom above my requirement to analyze each game of the NFL season, I always want competitive games on Thanksgiving. Even in 2020 — where not everyone will be assembling in the same household — football is a mainstay. As are the Detroit Lions.
We’ve been fortunate that Detroit has featured a healthy Matthew Stafford under center for quite awhile. In the past, we’ve watched the likes of Shaun Hill, Jon Kitna, and, most recently, David Blough. The problem, of course, is that Stafford may not be fully healthy.
This will obviously be the story to follow in the lead-up to Thursday afternoon’s game, but, as always, when the spread is released prior to any announcement about a quarterback’s health, we have to act on it.