Years ago, the Labor Day weekend usually meant Week 1 of the National Football League. As a young Minnesota Viking fan, it meant the world to my brother and I.
It was a football tradition, the men of American families gathering throughout neighborhoods in anticipation of the beginning of the NFL football schedule.
Grills were fired up, American flags waved. Children ran around yards, footballs were thrown around, and to the chagrin of countless American wives, beers were opened early.
The NFL was the Labor Day weekend, and enraptured boys such as my brother and I looked forward to watching the Vikings as much as we did to Christmas morning.
Then in 2001, the big heads of the NFL and national advertisers forever took it away from us.
They looked over a formula that was familiar to proprietors and lawyers alike and told themselves–and us–it would be better to wait a weekend and start the season in the second week of September.
Why?
Money.
My thoughts then, and now, haven’t changed. I believe the NFL loses tens of millions of dollars each year using this formula. They either dismiss or forsake the idea of that American tradition where sons and fathers figuratively joined hands and hearts to watch their home team start the season on that last Summer holiday weekend that was given to them for their work, Labor Day.
That Sunday where wives joined wives and girlfriends, sharing experiences and children and teasing rebukes of the men crowded around TV sets with their boys as they watched their struggling or successful teams, exclaiming arm-chair barbs and athletic accolades.
It’s easy for many of us old enough to remember households and neighborhoods coming alive with football jerseys, the smell of chili and steak, hamburgers, hot dogs, endless cans of beer and pop in iced coolers.
We listened to Pete Summerall and Tom Brookshire, Frank Gifford and John Madden call Week 1 marquee matchups between the Cowboys and the Redskins, the Jets and the Dolphins, the Vikings and the Bears.
We tackled brothers and cousins and friends in the yard on that last Summer weekend before school started again and we were all able to be together.
Sure, we’ll survive. And we won’t lose a game. Just like we’ll survive NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s great devotion to revenue with his undying sponsorship of Los Angeles and international NFL games.
But we’ve lost that American tradition that I loved so much.
Because even on those Labor Day weekend Sundays when my team lost (and my Vikings didn’t lose often) I was still able to tackle a cousin running away from me with the football.
Time took the cousin away from me, but the NFL bean-counters took the start of the NFL season away from Labor Day weekend.
And without knowing it, so many will unfortunately not know how good it was.