It took 132 days, but football is back. America, you can return back to your regularly scheduled Fall Sunday schedule 

SCOTT JACOBS

The Lockout is over.

Come hither and gather around as we roast marshmellows around the fire place and dance to joyous songs, for this tremendous occassion is what we, the sports fan needed ever so dearly.

This wasn’t about the players and what they wanted.  Or the owners and what they wanted.  Or even the lawyers and what they wanted (though truthfully, they won the most in this 132 day marathon. I bet you there’s no depression in their wallets right now).  This wasn’t about the media or even about the undrafted rookies and free agents who’ve been left to sputter in limbo for over 4 months.

Nope this was about the fan.  Even though … well, it wasn’t.

You see, if sports was truly about the fan, there would be no lockouts.  There’d be no holdouts.  There’d be no strikes, no decertifying of any kind, and there certainly would be cheaper ticket prices.

But it’s not about us, even though it is about us.

You see, this lockout affected us, psychologically, and it clogged our television with tedious shots of lawyers and our favorite players in suits and ties and not helmets and pads.  The players tweeted and reached out to us, saying that they just wanted to play football.  Bull!  The owners tweeted and messaged to us that they just wanted something fair.  So they tried to sneak by a TV deal that would have paid them hundreds of millions of dollars even if there was no season.

There was Twitter wars, and soccer tryouts, rapping, too much Adam Schefter, and way too much talk about Kevin Kolb.  There was nothing new to discuss because there was nothing available to discuss.  The lockout took over everything, and left our sports psyche in dissaray.  I tried not to believe that the two sides were dumb enough to let a season slip through the cracks, but I wasn’t convinced.

You cared about the lockout, but you cared more about football.  Some took the players side, others took the owners side.  If you noticed at Juiced Sports, we didn’t take any sides.  The whole thing sucked.  We chose not to achknowledge its existence.

But as we lumbered through a laborious baseball season where the best storyline was whether Albert Pujols’ hug of Jim Hendry really did mean he was a traitor, it was hard not to wonder when football would be back.  The NBA gave us a post-season to remember, and an NBA Finals that won’t soon be forgotten.  But on the height of it’s blossoming Lebropularity the NBA decided to vanish into CBA hibernation as well, this time the threat of a lost season genuinely real.

And the thought of missing an NBA and NFL season began to get scary.  If you’re a sports fan in this country this stuff is in your blood.  You greet each coming season like the start of a new year.  We live through sports.  We die through sports.  Somewhere in between we get lost in sports.  When you love sports like we do it’s hard to imagine there not being sports.

There was a time believe it or not where the NFL didn’t exist.  I just wouldn’t know how to deal with it.  The idea of organized league sports is a relatively new concept.  Back in the late 1800s there was no World Series to look forward to.  No radio. Television was a pipe dream.  Sports, well, that seemed to be the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.

But in 2011, sports are the fabric to our society.  They are the blanket that keeps us warm.  To wake up to no sports leagues on a crisp fall afternoon would be tragic.  And Sundays, well if you’re an NFL fan, no day during fall gets sacrified more than Sunday Funday, where the couch is your slave, and even going to the bathroom is something strategized and timed.

That’s the root of this lockout.  We love sports.  To go a year without the NFL would have been devastating. We care about the athletes and the owners and debate whether they should make what they do, but the reality is, we’re addicted.  If we weren’t, this lockout would have had us running for the hills.  But instead we stayed glued.  To our social media, our ESPN, our NFL Network, and all our different websites.  We stuck through 132 days of this crap because we love the game.

If this was about how much they made, none of us would be here today.  I’d have nothing to write because no one would care about the subject matter.  But we’re entranced. Wave an NFL football game in front of us and it’s intoxicating.  The promise of a new season?  Few things in life give us that kind of jolt.

I guess it’s sad in a way, how we vicariously live through these guys.  Maybe it’s the kid in all of us who at their core just loves sports.  Maybe we our fascinated by how they get to live our dreams.  Maybe it just makes for a great escape.  Whatever it is, sports are part of the family.  When you attach yourself to a team or a league, you’re hooked.

Hence, why this lockout was so bothersome.  No one really cared about losing the Hall of Fame Game, except those in Canton (sorry), but it was that idea that games could be lost that got scary.  A year without Sundays?  When I was younger I used to tell my friends that the only reason I looked forward to the start of school was because it meant football was not far behind it.

It’s fun to be a fan.  Take out the economic aspect of it, and there’s something very pure about getting lost in something bigger than yourself.  To be a sports fan is to know the language.  When you spot someone wearing your team’s logo or school colors it’s like a universal tongue.  An automatic talking point.  Sports breaks down barriers.

The athletes that play them and the owners who run them will never be perfect.

But we don’t need them to be.  For as long as there are sports, there will always be fans.

The NFL Lockout is over.  Back to reality.  Our warped, but awesome reality.

And I couldn’t be happier.

 Photo: AP

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