I’ve been spending quite a bit of time recently (too much, one might suspect) trying to figure out why I love football, despite the fact that my dearth of size, speed and the ability to break even a Pee Wee level tackle precludes me from taking any personal, athletic enjoyment from the sport. I don’t exactly know what it feels like to throw on pads and light up a dude. Nonetheless, along with everyone else I know, the game continues its Pavlovian mastery over American culture. And so it follows that over Labor Day weekend I only had one thing on my mind: Brady Quinn.

That’s right. I can’t stop thinking about the Cleveland Browns’ brunette locked, beefcake rookie quarterback. Now, this is not only because of his US Weekly propensity for spending more money on hair gel than the total gross national product of Burma or his proclivity for having pictures taken at the exact moment he’s playing the role of the biker dude while breaking down a Village People tribute. (Yeah, that happened.)

Nope. I’m mostly thinking about Quinn and how he’s adjusting to reading Dick Lebeau’s 3-4 blitz schemes. Does he understand the intricacies of the Cover 2? How are his mechanics on a three-step drop? And how quickly is he making his pass progressions?  All of these questions are important because Quinn plays for my favorite team. And when someone plays football for your favorite team, it becomes imperative to digest as many worthless facts about those players in the days and weeks leading up to a season.

Each year team camps unfold over the summer in a similar manner. Story lines are already written. It’s just a matter of the names and numbers needing filled in: Player A has lost weight and looks great. Player B feels tremendous because he put on weight and is now bigger, stronger. Player C is rejuvenated after joining a new team, playing for a coach he loves and in a system that will exploit his talents. Player D has been working on a new training hill in the offseason that’s set somewhere in the Mojave Desert.

And while we soak up these soap operatic stories about players progressing and regressing in the months leading up to a season, it’s all a prelude to the greatest television series ever conceived. Which is precisely the magic of football. It’s not the hits. It’s not the buttonhooks. It’s not the tailgating (although that doesn’t hurt). And it’s certainly not the personalities (right Vick and Pacman?).  Nope. It’s the suspense-laden rhythm of a relatively short season. That’s what separates football from every other sport in America.

I’ve read a lot about Americans enjoying football because of the inherent drama in a game where before the culminating play there’s a moment of rest, reflection and expectation. I buy that theory. In fact, I don’t think enough has been made of it. It’s the segmented styles of football, basketball and baseball that separates those sports from the more fluid play of soccer, favored by most everyone else in the world. Americans like drama. Digging deeper, it’s the pregnant pause between the football games themselves that separates the sport from baseball and basketball.

Football doesn’t ask too much of us. Three hours, once a week for four months. Which during the season leaves six days and 21 hours of argumentative pontificating about how a contest will unfold on an autumn Sunday. And then the majority of the calendar is filled with a long wait for the next season. Sound familiar?

That’s the precise formula a television show can offer that no other artistic medium can. Through the course of a great season – take the final episodes of “The Sopranos” earlier this year – there’s an ebb and flow that allows for a program, and by extension its viewers, to marinate like no other. It’s because of this communal wonderment that people still gather to watch a show at a set day and time even though the power of Tivo has made planning our lives around schedules set in a boardroom in Burbank meaningless. But still we do it. Of course that’s not the case for every television show. So while “Two and Half Men” doesn’t deserve to have one’s social life spin centrifugally around it, a great show like “The Sopranos does.” The same goes for football. It’s a great sport, sure. And because there are only 16 NFL games, each is precious. And out of the relatively small number of contests (baseball and basketball have saturated the market with 162- and 82-game seasons, respectively) develops a rhythm and intrigue that no other popular American sport can match. 

In recent years football has been expanding its weekday availability. Now there are two Monday night games. And Thursday games are becoming more common.  Along with many of my friends I’ve found myself initially saying I want more. But the league would do well to curb the understandable tendency to overreach. Expanding the schedule would be a mistake. There’s nothing wrong with leaving fans wanting more. Just look at The Sop-