Who do I still think I am??

This one's about your 2013 football preview.

30DBC PROMPT: "If you could have thirteen wishes, but each wish has to benefit a DIFFERENT person (one person can be you), what would you wish and for who? (This is your chance to do a lot of good in the world .)"

'Sup y'all? It's Friday...the first Friday in September, in fact...which means this coming Sunday will be the first full weekend of NFL football that means anything in more than a few months. And if you're anything like me (and judging by the different kinds of people who read this, you're not), you love football and you know that WDC doesn't have very many places for the sports fans that reside in us to go. Most writers are probably content with having ESPN or Fox Sports do the heavy lifting, and there is no shortage of fan-based content available on the internet (actual content varies by intelligence).

It's high time someone around here decided to take a look at the upcoming NFL season! And I'm nominating myself to do that, since I don't think anyone else would seem to mind. Besides, I haven't written an entry that was central to football, or any other sport for that matter, in a long time.

It's fair that you should know that while my personal allegiances may always be with my hometown Buffalo Bills, I'm by no means a homer. I'm not gonna sit here pretending the Bills are gonna go 16-0, or shock the world and even make the playoffs this year. I may be a fan, but I'm not stupid.

Now, if someone were to grant me, say, thirteen wishes? Well, on account of that I might be willing to stick my neck out a little. Is it just a coincidence that the Bills have gone thirteen years without making the playoffs? I think anybody reppin' 716 would tell you that they have one wish in this life, whether they're barely old enough to tell you football means to them, or old enough to remember the old AFL days, it'd be this: I want to see the Bills win the Super Bowl at least once in my lifetime. This sentiment has been shared by so many fans that's it's sprung quite a Queen City legacy...https://borninbuffalo.net/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products....

I can't say I don't feel the same way. I know I've uttered those words in reference to both the Bills and the Buffalo Sabres (who have their own version of the shirt as well). The one thing I can predict with the most sincerity is that there is more optimism about this year's version of the Bills than I've seen in the recent past. While that likely won't translate to on-field success, I think the organization is finally headed in the right direction after years of failure and, even worse when you're trying to rebuild a franchise and get back into the playoffs, stunning mediocrity. If there were a way to multiply a wish thirteen times to break an unlucky or unfortunate run, then that would be the magic solution. Forget the pundits and prognosticators; if the fans united in spirit and will, couldn't they just send out positive vibes that cause quarterbacks to stay healthy, defenders to not miss tackles, and coaches make the right decisions? Not just for the team, but to also end their own suffering? To ensure their Septembers of high hopes are matched by Decembers of "Finally, this is OUR year!"? To freeze their asses off in Ralph Wilson Stadium for something more meaningful than a $9 beer?

If only, fans. This is the NFL we're talkin' about, not some disco where playin' the wall just right and hopin' the blonde in the tight jumper is gonna ask you out on the floor where you can show her off in front of your buddies while proclaiming "Dreams really can come true!" I know it's a cliché, but there's a reason they play the games. Every team has a chance once the ball's kicked off, but only one gets to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in February. While I'm 99.9825% sure it won't be the Bills this year, and I hope all of my friends following their favorite NFL teams have seasons that provide lots of exciting memories, I'm not gonna go as far as to offer a full-blown statistical analysis that quotes analytics (the new phrase and process du jour in the NFL-and other sports now as well- this year, so get used to hearing it).

Here's thirteen wishes/thoughts/tidbits for the 2013 NFL season (that may or may not be entirely true, and feel free to mock me for them in December):

Peyton Manning will throw for more touchdown passes in week 1 than the Oakland Raiders will rush for the entire season. (Ok, so I know this is cheating just a little bit because Denver played last night, but c'mon...the Raiders are gonna be historically bad this year. Wait...which idea was more obvious again?? )

I wish we could go one year without people hearing stories in the local news about Bills fans getting caught in the act of making love on the bleachers during blowouts when half the crowd has already left to finish gettin' smashed in the parking lot beat the traffic. I think people sell squares and start office pools based on which game will be the first one this becomes newsworthy.

Adrian Peterson of the Vikings will go over 2,000 yards rushing again this year (if he stays healthy), because his quarterback will be playing for a roster spot as next year's third-stringer somewhere else.

When injuries start piling up, some NFL team is gonna sign Tim Tebow. But he won't play a down this year. At least not at QB.

I wish the rash of injuries this preseason (especially with knees) we saw was just a fluke. But more teams are starting to err on the side of caution as well when it comes to noticing injured players (especially those who have suffered concussions), so expect numbers on weekly injury reports to rise...but that's not necessarily a true indication of an injury's severity anymore either).

AFC Division Champs: New England, Cincinnati, Houston, Denver. Wild Cards: Indianapolis and Baltimore.

NFC Division Champs: Washington, Green Bay, Atlanta, Seattle. Wild Cards: San Francisco and Detroit.

All four NFC divisions are gonna be tight races, and the four teams in each division are really gonna beat up each other. At least one fourth-place NFC finisher would be in contention for a wild card spot if they played in the AFC West.

The NFL will have a serious push-back in at least one city from fans regarding its new policy regarding what kinds of bags can be brought into the stadium (ladies, this means no purses...and all bags must be see-through, without being bigger in size than roughly a gallon freezer bag). I read an excellent blog post from a woman's perspective about this a few weeks ago...http://thebroadsside.com/2013/06/26/491/.

The New York Jets' starting QB in December of 2013 is not currently on their roster. Their head coach in September of 2014 is not currently employed by any of the league's 32 franchises.

I wish the NFL would drop their wet dream about having a franchise in a city that doesn't love it, Los Angeles, and announce during this season that it's fine with where all of the teams are located. Except Jacksonville. You might be a great city, but your support for an NFL franchise sucks. If the league ever wants to establish a minor league system, you'll be considered. But until then, please move your team to someplace else, where people actually want to see your team play, and preferably with an NFL-caliber quarterback in tow as well. And please, do something about your dreadful superhero wanna-be outfits uniforms. Serious, this design http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/fandom/post/_/id/21215/uni-watch-analysis-new-j... actually had competition and was selected because it was better than something else? You should be able to do better than that, Jacksonville, and the NFL knows it can too.

The Bills will finish the season with somewhere between four and seven wins, but they'll look a hell of a lot better than their stretch a few years back where they finished 7-9 three straight seasons.

The 49ers will beat the Broncos in one of the top three lowest-scoring games in Super Bowl history, primarily because it will be played in New York during a snowstorm. More people will be watching to see how corporate greed reacts in inclement weather rather than just to see the commercials.

I think I speak for the majority of football fans when I now declare that yes, we are in fact ready for some football.

BCF PROMPT: "What memories, if any, do you have of high school football games?"

Believe it or not, your boy over here went out for his high school's football team in both the sophomore and senior years. I never made it through summer practices to game eligibility though...I dislocated and broke my left pinky finger in tenth grade, and broke my right shoulder again the summer before twelfth grade after initially breaking it as a junior during wrestling season. The pinky to this day is still crooked.

While I was considered to be a great player whenever we'd play pick-up football at neighborhood parks, parking lots, or wherever else we could play when the nuns chased us off of Villa Maria Academy's lawn, I never amounted to much in actual practices for my school's team. I was a running back and a linebacker, and probably the shortest kid on the team. I tried hard, but I never could remember the playbook. And even though I was in great shape from lifting weights and wrestling, my love of the game wasn't enough to overcome my deficiencies when the pads were strapped on and I was running up against much bigger kids who'd been playing organized ball for years.

So I did the only thing I could do...I became a fan. I tried to get to as many home games as I could, and sometimes we could catch a bus with the cheerleaders to the road games. I remember the team not being great, but not being horrible either my senior year. Sometimes my friends would sneak a little booze into the games, and we'd hide out under the bleachers passing it around, trying not to get caught.

In the twenty years since I graduated, I don't believe I made it back to another game at my school's field. In certain respects, I wish I was still a student there just to have that experience again of going to the games from a teenage perspective now, with the glut of technology and information that's available. They've had some pretty good teams recently and overall the local high school scene seems to have improved talent-wise, but I don't think you'll be confusing Western New York with Texas when it comes to football anytime soon. But it's still a fun way to kill an evening or a weekend afternoon.

MUSICAL BREAK!!

Back when MTV was still showing videos, this was one of my favorites. It showed funny moments, bloopers, highlights, and cheerleaders. It was a good time to be about ten or eleven years old back then.

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

I just noticed there still isn't a hockey emoticon. And there aren't any hockey moments in the Dire Straits video either. I smell some kind of tandem shenanigans going on.

I still prefer http://espn.go.com/nfl/'s coverage over http://www.nfl.com/'s website. Both essentially report the same headlines, but the commentary pieces from ESPN are allowed to have a little more of an edge to them, and the individual team reports aren't ran by the teams themselves (which allows for both factors to exist out from under the NFL's umbrella). NFL.com's coverage would be akin to a country having only one primary source of news media being run by an offshoot of whatever form of government is in control. ESPN.com (and other sites) can offer contrasting opinions on certain matters, rather than having to toe the company line. But I'm not entirely a fan of the new way ESPN's expanded their coverage of the teams...it's gonna take some getting used to because of them moving away from a divisional format.

Oh my...this may be the second-best commercial of the young NFL season: http://www.youtube.com/user/OldSpice?v=C-UciSePPPw

Well people, I've run out of things to bring up on a near-perfect evening for the greatest American pastime that isn't played on ice with a puck. Peace, the kick is up, and it's GOODNIGHT NOW!!