It’s January 25th, 2021—the day after the NFL’s annual conference championship weekend—and Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski are going to the Super Bowl. Change the date, and that sentence can also be applied to 2019, 2018, 2017, 2015, and 2012. Sure the conference and patina of the jerseys has changed, but it’s the same old song and the same old dance—a veritable football 'Groundhog Day' we can’t escape no matter how long and hard we bang on the walls of our little B&B in Punxsutawney, USA. We are captives in this twisted reality, and Brady and Gronk our captors, amplifying the queasy sense of deja vu by celebrating their Super Bowl berth on Sunday night precisely as they did in 2019. Guess we're getting six more weeks of winter after all . . .
At this point you might be wondering if this is, in fact, hell and you’re dead but didn’t realize it. Very possible, friend. Very possible! But no matter what we did to deserve this terrible fate, please, lord, grant us mercy. We’ll do anything. We’ll give up carbs. We’ll stop cursing. We’ll be kind to strangers on the internet. Just deliver us from this endless torture. We’ve learned our lessons. We swear it. We’ll even give old Bob Cratchit Christmas Eve off if that’s what it takes.
If the past two decades have taught us anything, however, it’s that there is no escape. The more we kick and scream, the tighter the chains become. So perhaps we should let Tom n’ Gronk make their little video and take solace in the fact we got to watch Aaron Rodgers cry. Perhaps we should be grateful for the gift of watching the greatest quarterback to ever play the game get one last (lol, lol, lol) ride. Maybe, just maybe, a little gratitude is what finally lifts this terrible curse.
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