Op-Ed: Football is back but did it ever leave?

The American football season is here again. The last official football game was the Super Bowl back in February, about seven months ago.

Football continued almost daily after that. The ending of the season is the beginning of the next season. The NFL Combine starts then it's "Spring Football" and then it's the NFL Draft. The draft goes on for 2 or 3 days. There are draft parties, analysis, predictions and on and on. It seems to be endless. That is precisely what the NFL wants. They want football to stay in the minds of fans 12 months a year and 24 hours a day. It is no wonder that football is the nation's past time. It surpassed baseball in that regard years ago. The football audience is growing world wide. The NFL has scheduled regular season games in London the past few years. They had preseason games in Mexico. They had regular season games in Canada the last couple of years. By the way, there is a Canadian Football League. It used to be a place where NFL rejects would go and many of them thrived in that league. I guess it still is. Warren Moon who is now in the NFL Hall of Fame was a standout in the Canadian Football League. During the football "off season" we had plenty of football to watch on the NFL Network. The was plenty of football analysis on ESPN. The only story that really interrupted football was the LeBron James announcement fiasco. Other than that, it was all NFL all the time. College football had its share of coverage too. I hope the football season is an exciting one. Like many others around the world, I'll definitely be watching.