It is in these moments of tender and ridiculous nostalgia that I know something inside me is still broken.

There's an invisible army of woman and men who really don't get why we give so much of ourselves to football. And they need to SPEAK UP.

Even a hundred and fifty years ago, football was popular because it provided a manly spectacle that lots of men needed, after the industrial revolution. We went from a culture that lived out doors and expanded the frontier and fought the Indians to a bunch of guys in offices. So football provided this jolt, a kind of exalted cult of masculinity. And it still does that. Perhaps even more so today.

A lot of what I'm having to do to get myself weaned from football is really limit what media I allow myself to consume. And it's a big drag. But it's also the only way to kick the habit.

Football is the most successful cult, in terms of members and profits, in human history. Oh wait, there's also religion.

It is certainly true that cooking is therapeutic, creative and all those other faintly creepy self-helpish words. I would love to tell you that learning to cook was part of my journey toward actualization. I would love to tell Oprah this. I would love to tell Oprah this while weeping. But I learned to cook for a much simpler reason: in the abject hope that people would spend time with me if I put good things in their mouth. It is, in other words (like practically everything else I do), a function of my desperation for emotional connection and acclaim.

The truth is, every sport has been turned into a huge, nihilistic business.