So, anyway, thanks

Happy Turkeycide Day, everyone, and here's hoping the bird comes out juicy and succulent, and the stuffing is savory, and the pumpkin and pecan and (for me) sugar cream pie holds out against the expected onslaught.

I'd like to say a few words of thanks, at this time. I'd like to thank 2020 for some stuff.

Yes, I know. It's been a pill, 2020. It's been the weirdest, stupidest, vilest year that ever took a can of paint and scrawled a giant penis on a calendar. And it's especially been a nasty son of you-know-what to Sportsball World, because it's killed so many of our treasured icons.

Just yesterday, for instance, it killed off Maradona. Maradona, for heaven's sake, god of soccer, who wasn't even that old (60). 2020 just doesn't take a day off, I swear.

But I'd like to give thanks to it anyway.

I'd like to give thanks that 2020 didn't let the cheatin' Astros win the World Series, which would have been intolerable considering it's taken Tom Seaver and Al Kaline and Lou Brock and Bob Gibson from us, among others.

I'd like to give thanks we got a Masters, even though it was weird; and an Indianapolis 500, even though it was weird; and college football, even though it continues to be weird.  2020 could have wrecked all of that, too, but it left the backdoor cracked just enough so clever people could make it kinda-sorta happen. So there's that.

I'd like to give thanks there will be state championship high school football in Lucas Oil Stadium this weekend, in spite of everything. Blue ribbons will go around some necks, and red around others, and there will be joy and heartbreak and tears and laughter, and the culmination of a hard strange season beneath the bright lights and closed sky.

I'd like to give thanks for Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady and Kyler Murray and Lamar Jackson, who are all still playing. I'd like to give thanks for the New England Patriots, who are  finally, finally discovering how the other half lives. 

I'd like to give thanks for the Detroit Lions, because Thanksgiving wouldn't be the same without crummy football, and for the Dallas Cowboys and Washington To-Be-Renamed-Laters for the same reason. I'd like to give thanks the To-Be-Renamed-Laters are going to be renamed later, at long last. And I'd like to give thanks for the Chicago Bears' continuing run of beige at the quarterback position -- because in a year without normal, pining for the days of Bob Avellini or Jack Concannon or Bobby Douglass is as close to normal as a Bears fan can get.

I'd like to give thanks for bubbles, and for bubble screens. For alternating cries of "The Colts are terrible!" and "The Colts look like a Super Bowl team!", depending on the week. For the ability, in an America awash in a killer virus and political corruption and all manner of presidential lunacy, to be able to push all that aside because, down a score with no timeouts and the clock running out, our idiot coach called a five-yard route to the middle of the field on third-and-10.

Thank God, in the midst of all 2020's chaos, we can still throw stuff at our TVs and call Coach a moron. Because there is comfort in that, surely.

So thanks, 2020. But don't get too full of yourself. You kill off another sports icon, and we'll boot your decrepit ass out the door before you even see Christmas.

I mean, this is 2020. I bet we can do that.