Watch @FWBluesFan slow dance...for charity!

Many people who are reading this know Twitter user @FWBluesFan, either through Twitter or in real life. Those who know him know that he is generally a quite mannered person. But yesterday, May 28, with my own two eyes, I saw him do something wildly antithetical to this persona.

While at the wedding of our friend, Twitter user @dspPickuptruck, the Fort Worth Blues Man participated in dancing, as people often do at wedding receptions, but the true highlight was during a slow dance song, Ed Sheeran's omnipresent 2014 hit ballad "Thinking Out Loud", in which he and the groom engaged in a slow dance.

I have mentioned this to a few people already, and consensus is that this did not happen. But not only did it happen, but I have video to prove it. Two details about the video.

1. It is 35 seconds long and they dance for about 34 seconds of it. The video ends with a pair of bridesmaids, who were also dancing to the song, crashing into me.
2. At one point, listeners can hear a voice other than Sheeran's belting the lyric "that baby now". The voice is mine, attempting feebly to sing.

I would love nothing more than to share this video with you. I've watched it several times and hope others will get the privilege. Now, I could just post the video on Twitter, but we have made the decision to try to parlay our silliness into helping a worthy cause.

I will post the video of @FWBluesFan and @dspPickuptruck slow-dancing to "Thinking Out Loud" to Twitter and to this post if we are able to raise $69 for the American Cancer Society.

Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's juvenile. But who says that supporting a good cause must be ultra-serious? I made the decision to turn this video into a charity effort, and @FWBluesFan picked a very worthwhile cause. In fact, I donated to the cause myself.

So really, you guys only need to raise $59. If every one of our followers donates five cents to ACS, the video will go beyond my cell phone.

If you would like to contribute, go to donate.cancer.org and make a one-time donation. E-mail me at johnjf125 at gmail dot com to confirm that you made the donation: a screenshot of the donation screen, forwarding a confirmation e-mail, a screenshot of the confirmation e-mail, etc. are all acceptable as long as it is clear that it is authentic. 

If you want to blur or block out information (such as I did above, where I blurred my phone number), feel free to block out as much as you'd like as long as you maintain the dollar amount donated. If you want to keep it completely anonymous, you may blur out single bit of information on the e-mail aside from the dollar amount while using a dummy e-mail account. All information regarding individual donations will remain 100% anonymous.

As an extra bonus, if we can raise $420 (yes, I am 12 years old), I will record an audio commentary of the video (it will actually be much longer than 35 seconds). Hopefully I can convince one of its co-stars to also appear to break down the video, but I can promise that I will be there. So we are only $410 from that. Less than 34 cents per follower gets us to this level.

All donations are welcome and encouraged. No amount is too small. Thank you in advance.

I wrote a spec script for Crying Birds's TV show

@johnjf125 Everything is terrible. I'm currently writing a pilot about you, Grobot, @lil_scooter93 and Adron Chambers sharing an apartment.

— those crying birds (@crying_birds) May 22, 2016

Having partially inspired Crying Birds to creative heights with his pilot about a television show in which Grobot (henceforth referred to as "Nick"), @lil_scooter93 (henceforth referred to as "Heather"), and former St. Louis Cardinals quad-A outfielder Adron Chambers share an apartment with me, I have decided to begin a spec script for this show. While I personally would have titled the show "Apartment 2F", I #re2pect CB's decision to name it "Four Stories." And here is the story I have chosen to tell. I have only a vague idea of how scripts are written, format-wise, so please just enjoy the CONTENT on its own terms.

As the scene begins, John is sitting alone on a couch in the living room, typing on his laptop. That commercial where Jon Bon Jovi strums an acoustic guitar, singing and obliterating a small child as part of selling DirecTV is on in the background.

*Nick walks in the apartment*

NICK: Do you know if Addie bought milk at the store this morning?

JOHN: Wh...Addie? Who's Addie?

NICK: You know, Adron.

JOHN: Wait, you're calling him Addie? I think we need a vote on this.

NICK: What the hell's wrong with Addie?

JOHN: Well, first of all, it doesn't even save on syllables. And if one of us is going to be nicknamed Addie, it should be Heather, since she's an accountant.

*Heather walks in the apartment*

HEATHER: Who's an accountant? (Laugh track, which otherwise does not appear on the show, for some reason loses its absolute shit over this joke)

JOHN: Oh, um, nobody's an accountant here, absolutely nobody. Nick just thinks we should call Adron "Addie".

NICK: Look, if you want to call him Adron, you go right ahead, but I think Addie sounds good.

*Adron walks in the apartment*

ADRON: Heyyyyyyyy gang. (This is his catchphrase, and because sitcoms are almost uniformly garbage, this is one of the better catchphrases in the history of television)

EVERYBODY ELSE IN UNISON: Heyyyyyyyy Adron! (Yeah, I know Nick's supposed to be calling him Addie, but this was really just a set piece at the beginning to pad the word count)

ADRON: Hey, I was just, I was thinking about something.

JOHN: What's that?

ADRON: Well, like, you know, it's kind of weird that I'm living with you guys.

JOHN: Nah, man, it's awesome. We're an interracial, mixed-gender group. We're like The Revolution here (oh, also I'm wearing a Prince t-shirt in the scene, RIP).

ADRON: No, it's not...it's not that. But, like, you're a bunch of single people in your 20s. I turn 30 later this year, and also I'm married. Doesn't logic suggest I should be living with my wife?

HEATHER: You're married?

ADRON: I...I think so. Wikipedia didn't say. Look, anyway, this just seems weird to be.

NICK: Don't be an asshat, Addie. This is a great setup we have. Yeah, you kind of stand out in the group because you're the old guy and also because you are a former professional baseball player and we're just a bunch of weird people on the internet...

ADRON: I'm still a baseball player, Nick. I'm in the Cubs minor league system.

HEATHER: The Cubs? So, um, do you hang out with Jason Heyward or Kris Bryant ever?

JOHN: *Looks straight at camera* Here we go again! *Looks around room* Oh, really? Nobody else is gonna say it with me? *Walks to the fridge and opens a beer that looks exactly like a Budweiser can except it says "Beer" on it* You guys are assholes.

ADRON: No, they're in the big leagues and I'm in the minors. It's like you guys don't even know me.

NICK: Well, we don't really know you. I know you scored that run against the Cubs in 2011 but that's it, really.

HEATHER: It's okay, Adron. I feel like an outsider here sometimes too. (The audience has an audible gasp like she just said she had a freaking brain tumor or something)

JOHN: Well, why's that?

HEATHER: Well, like, I'm the youngest one here. I'm the only woman. I don't even know why you guys invited me to be your roommate. I feel like a token woman here. I'm like Elaine on Seinfeld or that one girl, I don't know, I think her name was Kate or something, on The Drew Carey Show. Like, okay, there's three guy characters so we have to throw a female character into the mix.

JOHN: Look, Heather, I get what you're saying, but this isn't a TV show. (The audience LOSES IT on this joke, which I know I said there isn't a laugh track here but this was too damn much). And yes, we all have our differences. Nick's the tall one. Adron is the one that won a World Series ring with the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals. You're the woman. And I'm the extremely hot one. But while we all have our differences, we're all trying the best we can with these...four stories. (Audience erupts with applause and I win all of the Emmys that Jim Parsons won for The Big Bang Theory for some reason)

A tale of two Blues fans

Eight days ago, Tony X was just some guy with a Twitter account. Tony, whose Twitter handle is @soIoucity, had a little over a thousand followers last Monday night and as of the moment I started typing this sentence, he had 85,692.

The genesis of Tony's spike in Twitter followers, for the uninitiated, is that he turned on Fox Sports Midwest hoping to watch a Cardinals game, but instead found Game 7 of the first round of the NHL playoffs between his hometown St. Louis Blues and the Chicago Blackhawks. According to Tony, he had never before watched a hockey game, but he nevertheless kept his TV on the channel and, as he live-tweeted, fell in love with the game. He was mesmerized by the sport's intensity and the drama of the event.

Granted, most hockey games aren't tightly-contested playoff game sevens between bitter rivals, one of which is your hometown team, and Tony probably got a bit lucky that this was his first exposure to the sport, but Hockey Twitter fell in love with his enthusiasm. He was naive to the specifics of hockey, but he had an enthusiasm which was infectious.

For as jaded as adults can get online about sports, Tony revealed a different perspective: somebody who discovers something new and just wants to tell everybody about how great it is. It doesn't have to be a sport--I discovered Oasis after they'd been selling out soccer stadiums in Europe for over a decade, but that didn't mean I didn't want to scream to everybody I know about how OH MY GAWWWWD YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO SUPERSONIC RIGHT THIS INSTANT.

I was seven when I watched my first hockey game. Tony was an adult. There is a cavalcade of people best described as "haters" who clearly resent Tony's rise to pseudo-fame, which I do not understand whatsoever--I understand not being interested in seeing some random guy learn hockey on the fly, but the sense of "What did this guy do to earn this attention?" is odd to me. He entertained people and in many cases, reminded people of themselves.

In a strange way, he reminds me of my dad.

My dad is a generation older than Tony, and unlike Tony, has watched hockey before. He used to be a somewhat big fan: the first sport I ever watched was hockey, and it was because I watched the first home game of the Wayne Gretzky in St. Louis "era" (it's a footnote in Gretzky's career, but it was a formative experience of my sports fandom) with him that I eventually started following other sports.

But not long after I took to hockey, my dad stopped caring about it. He has always cited the Blues trading his favorite player, Brendan Shanahan, as the inciting incident which dulled his hockey fandom (this predates the Gretzky trade, but I'm willing to accept that the 1995-96 season was a transition year in a vacuum). But this always seemed strange to me, especially after Shanahan netted a 20 year-old Chris Pronger, an eventual Hall of Famer whose number will rightfully be retired by the Blues.

A month and a half after the Brendan Shanahan trade, the St. Louis Rams played their first game.

My dad was always a bigger fan of the Rams than the other St. Louis sports teams, including the Cardinals. Remember a few years ago when the Cardinals played in Game 5 of the World Series while, at the same time, the 3-4 Rams played the Seattle Seahawks on Monday Night Football? Most people I know ignored the Rams game. I didn't, but the World Series took priority, with the Rams getting my attention during commercial breaks. Dad watched the Rams exclusively. He wasn't at the game or anything--he just cared about the Rams that much more.

Tony X, it appears, was similarly passionate about the Rams. I don't know Tony's age, though it seems that, like me, he doesn't remember a world in which the Rams were not in St. Louis. For all of the national talk about the Rams' brief time in St. Louis, if you're under the age of 30, you remember the Rams in St. Louis as ubiquitously as you remember the Packers in Green Bay or the Steelers in Pittsburgh.

Rams left me ........ @StLouisBlues saved me 🙌 https://t.co/SIlJ5heFjb

— Tony X. (@soIoucity) April 26, 2016

The Cardinals are great and wonderful. Hell, I write for a Cardinals blog. I'm not exactly ambivalent to their existence. But fans have a different relationship with the Cardinals, a ubiquitous local brand, than they do with less successful teams.

A little over a month ago, I wrote about how the Cardinals should specifically court alienated ex-Rams fans, though in fairness to the Cardinals, this was always going to be a less intuitive courtship than one spearheaded by the Blues. Fandom of the Blues, or any hockey team for that matter, is less casual. Say what you will about attendance for the Rams or Blues during lean years (of course, owners dangling the franchises to other cities didn't help the matters, either), but the fans who did show up and who did loudly rep their teams were hardly passive fans.

It had been well over a decade since my dad watched a Blues game. The only hockey I can recall him watching beyond my elementary school years was the last two minutes of the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals, and even after Marc-Andre Fleury's absurd performance stopping a flurry (pun unintended but nevertheless kept) of Detroit Red Wings shots, I could barely get him to muster more than a casual noting of impressiveness.

He usually goes to bed around 8 on weeknights, but he stayed up and watched every minute of Game 7 against the Blackhawks. He made sure before Game 1 against Dallas to know what channel NBC Sports was. During overtime of Game 2, he texted me about how nervous he was. It was the first time he had texted me about an in-progress sporting event since the final game of the St. Louis Rams.

Something is happening here. I had assumed when the Rams moved, St. Louis would collectively find another NFL team, but as it increasingly appears the entire league left us out to dry, this ceased to be an option. So in the end, our new Rams will not be the Chiefs nor the Bears nor the Colts. It's the Blues.

I was a Blues fan anyway, but it was only in 2016 that the Blues saved me.

The Weird Cardinals Twitter Bracket Finale

Two weeks ago today, @FWBluesFan and I launched the Weird Cardinals Twitter Bracket, a more (metaphorically) regionalized version of the Cardinals Twitter Bracket from @RooCourtSTL which had swept St. Louis baseball fans by storm. And today, going into tonight, we are proud to conduct the championship round of our bracket between 3-seed @lil_scooter93 and 8-seed @VanHicklestein.

As has been tradition, I will make no formal endorsements on the matter and instead focus on proctoring the vote in as fair of a manner as I possibly can. I would, however, like to congratulate both Twitter accounts on their resounding success to this point.

@VanHicklestein has traversed a difficult road to the final, defeating the nearly four times as followed @HighSock_Sunday in round one, Weird Cardinals Twitter insider favorite @crying_birds in the Elite Eight, and another more followed account in @turpin4prez in the Final Four.

@lil_scooter93 defeated each of the founders of this event, people with an inherent and systemic advantage in this competition, in the first two rounds, and then bested worthy up-and-comer @2xBirds to make the championship round.

Each of these accounts is worthy of its spot in this competition. If, by chance, you do not follow one or both of them, you should rectify that situation immediately. Voting runs until 10 p.m. In the event of each side receiving 50% of the votes, a 69 minute run-off will be conducted Sunday afternoon at an exact time yet to be determined.

We appreciate your support on this stupid idea we had and I believe I speak for the Fort Worth Blues Man when I say that we are overwhelmed and giddy to have seen so many people be so entertained by this little experiment.

The Weird Cardinals Twitter bracket

In an era in which "St. Louis Cardinals fan" turned into a pejorative, Weird Cardinals Twitter gives Cardinals fans a sense of community which the team's widespread popularity tends to undermine. By reputation, Cardinals fans are corny and self-righteous at best and deplorable racists at worst. But Weird Cardinals Twitter adheres to no such ideology. We exist as consumers of the Cardinals, not branches of them. We are first and foremost just a big group of friends cracking jokes and not taking itself too seriously. On March 15, @roocourtstl unveiled its Cardinals Twitter bracket of 64 Cardinals related Twitter follows. It has been a tremendous success, motivating hundreds to vote for their favorites (or, as was often the case, vote against their least favorites). And in the spirit of their wonderful idea, @FWBluesFan and I are proud to announce the 1st annual Weird Cardinals Twitter bracket. The initial list of 69 candidates has been cut to 17. Difficult decisions were made and hopefully those who did not make the field are not too offended that we deemed them as having too much of a life to crack this. The seeding is semi-arbitrary and more weight is given to setting up interesting matchups than to editorializing about the worthiness of each entry. Voting on the play-in matchup between the two 16 seeds will begin later today, March 19, with the Sweet 16 to begin not long after. Methodology will be a series of Twitter polls. Here is the bracket (and no, I didn't write my own preview):

16: @vexedtechie earned his way into the field by coining "Sabermattrics", which he used to track how Matts Carpenter, Holliday, and Adams batted in 2015. As a whole, this epitomizes the analytics-leaning WCT in its irreverence. Twitter isn't about serious statistical research or identifying significant trends to predict future outcomes. It's about stupid puns. 16. @cardsnationjnky on the surface has leanings towards mainstream Cardinals homerism, but it is in his earnest commitment to his persona that Sean defines his brand. After all, if you're going to argue Michael Wacha over Clayton Kershaw, you might as well be really freaking adamant about it. 1. @crying_birds at first glance seems to be a non sequitur machine, but make no mistake: he knows exactly what he's doing. What he's doing is supposed to have killed Twitter by now but instead, it stripped Twitter of its pretense and self-serious #hashtag-ism and now is a form of performance art on a medium forever improved by his presence. 8. @VanHicklestein is a GIF artist and he has #stlcrads (sic) in his bio and he nearly toppled the awful @Total_CardsMove, in every way the antithesis of WCT, in the Roo Court STL bracket. Also he makes good tweets sometimes.

9. @HighSock_Sunday once asked the GOP front-runner for its 2016 presidential nomination if Joe Flacco is a elite quarterback...and he got an answer. @PFTCommenter is wildly influential on the sarcastic tone of WCT and in this instance, the latter took the former's lead and made the actual news because of it.

.@HighSock_Sunday #asktrump pic.twitter.com/qVakUzXZAb

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2015

5. @turpin4prez combines intelligent commentary on everything from sports to sociopolitical issues with an impossible-to-deny fluency in Weird Twitter conventions. This is his embodiment: 

I don't know if all Cardinals fans are racist meth addicts, but I know that I sure am

— Schmendrick Lamar (@turpin4prez) December 10, 2015

12. @grobot05 serves the pivotal WCT rule of whipping boy, and he deserves credit for willingly taking abuse for when he has a bad sports opinion, when he is accused of hitting on young women, and for his relatively good nature when his most earnest tweets are roundly mocked.

4. @Apartment_2F is an outstanding complement to his law school classmate Turpin. If the former, who leans right, and the latter, who leans left, hosted a political discussion show, any good and righteous American would watch. 2F loses some points though for abandoning his "John Daly in American flag pants smoking a cigar" avatar.

13. @prefix6 has always been good for timely Simpsons references, but it was during the all-too-brief Golden Age of Ditty that his star truly shined.

Repost, because so appropriate. pic.twitter.com/UphCuBUdWw

— Hercules Rockefeller (@prefix6) October 12, 2015

6. @FWBluesFan slowly evolved into a bizarre observer of all sports, displaying a jaded irreverence towards sports simply by reducing them to platitudes such as "(player/team) tried their best." Oh, and for asking everybody he sees if Joe Flacco is elite. 

Man when I vote later today I REALLLLLLLLLLY want to find a person wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat and ask him the Flacco question

— Fort Worth Blues Fan (@FWBluesFan) March 15, 2016

11. @thestlcardsfan4 has recently carved a niche as a TV blogger but he remains a blunt Cardinals follow. Mainstream Cardinals Twitter says Mike Matheny is good, and a certain type of intellectual fan will explain why he might not be. At WCT, we can just SAY he sucks because what difference could it possibly make what we think? 3. @lil_scooter93 is the only woman in this bracket, and while a simplistic approach would be to say that she is "one of the boys" among WCT, this is the opposite of the case. Heather doesn't try to hide her personality. She loudly and vociferously is what she is: a passionate and intelligent fan who makes tweets and goes about the WCT grind like everybody else. 

14. @johnjf125 is a mesh of smart and witty commentary on baseball, as well as the torch-bearer of Bridge Twitter. He takes pop culture references and uses them in brilliant analogies to all sports. His WCT brand was devalued when he became an actual serious writer at Viva El Birdos.
7. @azta110790 takes time between his day job shifts counting prairie dogs for the gummint to serve as president of the Tommy Pham Club. Also, he kind of looks like his avatar in real life.

10. @elmaquino is a former Cardinals blogger who departed from the writing game in favor of good baseball observations and jokes on Twitter.

Mike Matheny being ejected should show up in the win expectancy chart

— Maq (@elmaquino) June 3, 2015

2. @2xbirds, run by @dcwoodruff, provides a unique take on baseball-meets-politics. He took Maq's "Piscotty for President" tweet and has taken it brilliantly too far. Also, Chase created this video of Drew Magary dancing to "How Soon is Now?" by The Smiths, which I think about at least three times a day. 

@elmaquino @johnjf125 pic.twitter.com/uW8znmZ3KH

— Chase Woodruff (@dcwoodruff) October 19, 2015

15. @mstreeter06 is a top-flight GIFster but also is a pronounced WCT team player. Perhaps nobody more consistently replies "nice" when somebody uses the number 69 nor as consistently will reply to mentions to Alfredo Simon how he killed a guy. Just...just check the replies to this tweet.

#BigPasta cooked up a gem: http://t.co/LPaQuuiqCN pic.twitter.com/LUyiQJ7ylX

— MLB (@MLB) April 16, 2015

For those who felt marginalized in the big Cardinals Twitter tournament, I hope you enjoy our weird take on it. Matchups will be posted in the coming hours and days.

Life and the St. Louis Rams

I just want it to end.

I'm tired of waking up in the middle of the night, thinking about it, and not being able to go back to sleep. I'm tired of it crossing my mind every so often throughout the day and it paralyzing me, rendering me ineffective at work or unable to enjoy my leisure time. I know what's going to happen. Whatever naivete I previously had about the situation is gone. The St. Louis Rams are going to move to Los Angeles. There is not even a shadow of a doubt in my mind anymore.

And I just want it to end.

Ever since the Rams season ended, (of course) on a heartbreaking loss to a bad team which could have easily been a victory, being a Rams fan went from depressing to exhausting. It's not comparable to losing football games. If losing a game is the equivalent of your child getting a bad grade in school and watching your team go 15-65 over a five-year stretch is the equivalent of your child failing a grade, having your team given away to another city is the equivalent of your child being kidnapped.

For me, being a Rams fan is what I have. It isn't a matter of watching a football game sixteen times a year. If it were a matter of filling an extra 50 hours or so of leisure time a year, I could do that easily. Being a Rams fan is a fundamental part of my identity. It's not a thing I do; it's a thing I am.

I'm not going to try to convince anybody reading this about the politics of the stadium situation, about the wisdom or lack thereof regarding spending taxpayer money to finance a football field for a billionaire. Frankly, if your opinion on it is swayed by what I'm saying, it says to me that you didn't have a very well-reasoned opinion in the first place. What this is about is why it matters so much to me, and why it matters to a lot of people like me.

*********************************************************************************

I would estimate that of all conversations I've had with my father in the last five years, about 80% of them have been about football. The only reason I don't estimate it as closer to 90% is because we occasionally talk about baseball, as well. But football is the driving force. We texted yesterday, and it was about football. We texted on Saturday: again, about football. Same for Friday. Our last correspondence before that was on January 3, during what was likely the final game in the history of the St. Louis Rams. The last time we talked about something other than sports was when he texted me a traffic update on December 28. This includes seeing him in person since then, when we discussed football almost exclusively. Some baseball, but again, mostly football.

Honestly, I don't know what we're going to talk about anymore. Football is the lingua franca which has allowed two very different people with two very different personalities from two very different generations to communicate. Similarly, most of my best friends are also Rams fans. They are Cardinals and Blues fans, too, but this isn't the language we speak. EVERYBODY knows about the Cardinals. Being a Rams fan has long been a unique identifier.

I'd compare it to discussing The Beatles and discussing The Velvet Underground (and I say this as somebody who prefers the former, mind you)--my grandmother can hold a conversation about a dozen or so Beatles songs. Saying you like the Beatles, even saying you like specific songs or albums, says nothing in particular about who you are. If you can hold a conversation about VU, though, it is a statement on who you are. I could walk up to a random St. Louisan in a grocery store and talk to them about Jack Buck and Mike Shannon, but if instead you are able to speak in reverential tones about Jack Snow and Mike Bush, you're my kind of person.

I don't really like to talk too much about my social inadequacies, because I find it uncomfortable (and you probably don't find it all that pleasant either), but it matters an awful lot when it comes to this situation with the Rams.

I grew up very insecure about myself. As a child, I was always bright for my age and I did reasonably well in school, but there was a lot of self-loathing. I didn't have a lot of friends--I still don't, but as an adult, I don't think it's nearly as strange to have a small group of confidants rather than considering your entire list of Facebook friends to really, truly, be your friend. I was unathletic, overweight, and socially awkward. I didn't feel good about myself. I still don't sometimes.

When I entered high school, I knew maybe a dozen people in my class of 512 people. I was in an oddly gerrymandered district with two high schools and three middle schools and, thanks to a little help from lots of public middle school to private high school changes, a very small sliver of the middle school at which I at least had made some friends went to a different high school from everybody else. And I was one of them. I didn't have a single class freshman year with a single person I had ever met before. I ate lunch alone almost every day that year. Everybody is awkward their freshman year but at least the other people were awkward with their friends also being awkward.

But the Rams went 12-4 that year. Of course, they haven't had a winning record since that year, but they were 12-4 that year. So I was happy.

I've improved a little bit socially since, in that I no longer fear talking to somebody I don't know more than death. I went from 217 pounds entering my senior year of high school to peaking around 270 pounds in late 2013 to weighing around 160 pounds today. But two weeks from today, I will turn 27 years old, and I have never had anything that could even liberally referred to as a girlfriend. I doubt a study on the matter has ever been commissioned, but I would assume that the odds that I ever marry or have children are very low.

I've kind of thought this might be what would happen to me for a long time, starting back when it was just a complete lack of self-confidence and leading into days where it's just basic probability. And for a long time, I taught myself to be content with it. I wouldn't grow old alone because I would grow old with my Rams.

This isn't hyperbole--this is what the Rams have meant to me. They've been THAT important. My junior year of college, I was so disconnected from sports as a whole that I didn't even bother to watch any of the three Cardinals playoff games (in my defense, I didn't have cable and I did listen on the radio, though I can assure you this would not happen today) but I did stake out a prime viewing spot in the Student Union Building to watch noon NFL games I didn't care about so that I could watch the Rams lose 35-0 to the San Francisco 49ers at 3:15 alone.

Some people don't care. And I'm not even talking about fans of other teams that feel the need to troll Rams fans about what is literally heartbreaking--an extremely loud minority, but certainly a minority nonetheless. I'm talking about casual Rams fans, people who watched with intensity when the Rams were good but don't watch as intently now. 

And I'm not talking about bandwagoners, per se--I'm talking about people who maintain allegiance to the Rams and only the Rams but opt instead to spend their Sundays doing other things. People who go to the park or take a walk on nice early autumn days or focus on raising their children. People who, I'm sure, are much more happy and balanced people than those of us who devoted countless Sundays to an abysmal Rams team in the late 2000s and, even more appallingly, devoted Sundays to a mediocre Rams team that couldn't care less about us, or our hometown, or how miserable what amounts to a money grab for them would make us.

Some of us don't have these alternatives. This is what we have. Or, in a day or two, this is what we had.

I don't know what I'm going to do. Thinking about it makes me feel dizzy. I can defect to another team--not a small reason I tried (and failed) to develop a secondary allegiance to the Kansas City Chiefs this year was because that's the team my dad rooted for when St. Louis didn't have a team and has stated he will root for again next year. I'd like to think I'll just watch way less football next year, but it's not like I have a whole lot of other options. It's sad but it's true.

Like I said before, I'm not expecting to convert anybody, nor do I really want to do that. I know it's stupid that I care as much as I do. I know that spending $350 million in public funds to buy an asset for a man worth $7.7 billion is an objectively stupid thing to do anyway, and that while the Rams do provide measurable value to St. Louis by their mere existence, the city and the area will be better off without that additional expenditure. But that doesn't mean I, individually, will be. 

Go ahead and call me selfish--I probably am. But if, in order to save your job, the government were forced to spend $10 million, I would be opposed to doing so. Yet I wouldn't blame you for not being a good soldier about it. And that's all I hope, is for people to understand that this isn't just a football team. This is an identity.

My 2016 NFL Playoffs Likability Rankings

GAMBLING TIP: Bet the teams which rank the lowest on this list, as they are the teams which will win the Super Bowl. All sports are bad.

12. Arizona Cardinals: In another year, this might not be my least favorite team for the playoffs. But in light of present circumstances: a conniving billionaire-by-inheritance wiener who is incapable of being loved trying to leverage St. Louis's football team so that a western city will pretend to like him...nope. Not happening. I have no issues with the Arizona Cardinals, their coaches (Bruce Arians seems unpleasant but he's an undeniably terrific coach), nor their fans, but as long as a Bidwill owns them, I will root for them to fail.

11. New England Patriots: That a team could sign one of my five favorite football players ever in Steven Jackson, a player who is extraordinarily worthy of playoff success and overall football happiness, and that they could still not crack my top ten of likable playoff teams says an awful lot about their history of crimes against football. Rob Gronkowski is fine, even if his act has grown a bit tired, but with the exceptions of him and Jackson, there's not a likable player in the bunch. Also, their coaching staff still includes Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels. There is a 100% chance this year's Super Bowl is Arizona vs. New England. I might just re-watch Super Bowl XXXIV on DVD instead. The way football has gone for me lately, the Titans will probably win it, but that's still a whole lot better than either of these teams winning.

10. Green Bay Packers: They have their share of steroid users, but that's not a deal-breaker for me, really. Mike McCarthy is, thanks to Jim Caldwell not winning the Super Bowl he was in, the worst Super Bowl winning coach I can recall, but that doesn't make me hate him. The real problem with the Packers is their sanctimonious, obnoxious fans. In my experiences, no fan base has been less sympathetic to the Rams relocation than Packers fans (including local Packers fans), which was sadly predictable--Packers fans buy relentlessly into their own hype as The Best Fans In Football and seem to believe they are fans of a morally superior way of life rather than "oh hey, here's a football team that's absolutely never bad, let me be a fan of them." Screw these honkies.

9. Seattle Seahawks: Remember last year when the most likable thing about the Seahawks was Marshawn Lynch? He may not even play on Sunday. Without Lynch, we are stuck with their dog-whistle-inducing quarterback, their proven cheater (in college) truther coach, their overrated 21-st century Boz cornerback, and the 12TH FAN, another fan base totally wrapped up in the idea that their fan base has a divine right to football success, blissfully unaware that the team nearly moved to LA (which, to be fair, this applies to half of the NFL) in the 1990s thanks to the mediocre attendance the Seahawks had back when they weren't good every single year.

8. Washington R******s: Seriously, change your nickname. Also, Dan Snyder sucks for reasons which do not include their morally reprehensible nickname, but also for their morally reprehensible nickname.

7. Pittsburgh Steelers: The only team in the playoffs that I saw play in person this year, I had the great honor of sitting in the visitor's section. I tried yelling some trash talk about the Pirates to no avail, which is because they don't air a ton of Pirates home telecasts in their homes in St. Peters. Fun fact: I had a coworker one time who was an avid Pittsburgh Steelers fan who was eventually fired for telling a coworker (not me) that she was going to kick their ass. Also, the Steelers have a quarterback who was once jailed for murdering countless dogs, which makes him their second least likable quarterback. Redeemed largely by virtue of having Antonio Bae, the greatest wide receiver in NFL history.

6. Kansas City Chiefs: They have a few genuinely likable players: Jeremy Maclin, Eric Berry, Justin Houston. They don't really have any unlikable players: Alex Smith is boring but ultimately harmless. Andy Reid's ability to look like a tomato in team colors is charming. But that stupid Tomahawk Chop, man. They should be relieved that Washington's nickname deflects all negative attention that doing a mock-American Indian chant, at Arrowhead Stadium, with the nickname Chiefs, should cause. Also, this. And nobody cares about how loud your stupid crowd is. Also, the propensity for Chiefs fans to troll St. Louis for possibly losing the Rams (they're second only to Green Bay) in spite of tickets being available, in December, to see two playoff teams (they were playing the Bengals), FOR SIX DOLLARS. Yes, it was rainy and cold outside, but if the Rams owner actively trying to move the team isn't an excuse, why is this?

5. Cincinnati Bengals: A compelling reason in and of itself to root against the Bengals this week is A.J. McCarron. Look, I have nothing against A.J. McCarron--he was an overrated college quarterback in the sense that he was a game manager, but he was a GREAT game manager. He was on a team where all he had to do was not make mistakes and he NEVER made mistakes. But if he wins a playoff game before Andy Dalton, it's going to get unbearably stupid. No, McCarron should not be starting over Dalton. Dalton is good. You weirdos. Also, Jeremy Hill is the Mike Tirico of NFL players--in a field where there are a ton of awful people, granted, this guy tends to REALLY slide under the radar for being an awful person. Google Jeremy Hill if you must. And Mike Tirico, for that matter.

4. Houston Texans: The runaway train of J.J. Watt love went off the rails way too quickly. There's nothing to dislike about him, still: he just never was the amazing beacon for all that is good and right that people have tried to make him out to be. He's just a guy who plays football at a very high level. They get bonus points for Sanctimonious Internet Atheist Arian Foster being out for the season (after generations of obnoxious Evangelical Christians in the NFL, it seems like poetic justice that the first openly atheist NFL player would be totally insufferable about it to Ricky Gervais-esque levels). I still don't know anything about Brian Hoyer. You could tell me he was on the Rams for three seasons and I'd probably just nod and smile.

3. Minnesota Vikings: Adrian Peterson is an obvious unlikable player (though his punishment from the NFL was an example of Roger Goodell exacting loud justice to make up for his previously lax justice with regards to Ray Rice), but aside from that, there's a lot to like. Teddy Bridgewater is fun because, as a black quarterback who happens to be a slow runner, some people are irrationally confused by him (never forget). Stefon Diggs is going to be a really fun player for years to come. The team is largely anonymous but this adds to their appeal. Also, they're an oft-tortured fanbase. But man, I hate that horn..

2. Denver Broncos: I'm really sick of this revisionist hatred of Peyton Manning. What's the logic of this, Snarky and Cynical Sports Internet? That he does a lot of commercials (are they preempting commercials you'd prefer to watch instead)? That he probably votes Republican (his main historic rival is a DONALD TRUMP supporter and Peyton probably supports Ted Cruz or something but the point is NOT TRUMP)? That in 2016, I can throw the ball harder than he can? This only adds to his appeal. How hilarious would it be if arguably the greatest quarterback in NFL history, notorious for sucking in the playoffs, won a Super Bowl with a throwing velocity somewhere in the vicinity of 1880s Federal League pitcher?

1. Carolina Panthers: Did you know people still hate Cam Newton? How weird is that? It was one thing to root against him in college, when his possibly accepting money from boosters is against the rules, whether you like the rules or not. But look at what he is now. He's more hated nationally than Ben Roethlisberger, somehow. He's a dual threat quarterback but he's huge, so he's far less susceptible to the injury risks normal about dual threat quarterbacks. And he led his team to a 15-1 season with his best wide receiver being TED GINN. Also, there's "Third Leg" Greg Olsen. There's  owner Jerry Richardson, a fierce advocate for the NFL in St. Louis. There's Luke Kuechly. There's the fact that if this 15-1 team wins the Super Bowl, they will have equaled the '85 Bears, and by definition, you have to put them in the same group. And Michael Wilbon will freeeeeeeeak out about this. Go Panthers.