The NFL season upon us!

I’ll bet you didn’t realize the other night when the Raven’s went out to play Peyton Manning. They didn’t ever imagine in all their pre-season mind games with themselves that Peyton Manning would throw seven touchdowns on them, tying an NFL record. No way, right?  Surely, there was no way in the world that Peyton Manning would be able to throw seven touchdowns on the Raven defense after all that pre-season prep?

And that’s what the pre-season is all about. It’s a mind game. It’s prep.

You haven’t seen Chip Kelly’s new offensive vehicle yet. You have no idea what it’s going to be like tonight.  On Monday Night Football, it’s going to be unveiled. And we’re going to be able to finally get a look at it!

I’ve heard great things about it.  Then again, wasn’t the Raven’s defensive really great too?  It still ended up giving Peyton Manning the chance to throw seven touchdowns on them. Why am I talking so much about football?

As we all know, I love football intensely. But isn’t football just like dating?  Especially online dating?

You meet somebody, you read a profile, you think about it in your head, and you create this game plan based around what you’ve read about them.  You’ve texted back and forth a bit, and you’ve had chat on the phone.  You’ve prepped yourself so much for your first date you’re thinking to yourself, “there’s no way this isn’t going to go well!”

You’ve done all your homework on her. You’ve read up about all her favorite hobbies. And you’re fantasizing about how she could become your girlfriend. It’s all been going so well. She’s so cool. You’ve been texting backwards and forwards. She seems really interested.
You read her profile again. You start building the vision and the fantasy. You keep playing little mental movies in your mind of how it’s going to go down.  

Then it’s game day, or actually, date night!

You finally meet her, and an hour and a half later she throws seven touchdowns on you. Seven things you didn’t expect or plan for, and the date goes horribly. When you get home and you say to yourself, “whoa, that couldn’t have been the same person. I planned everything so thoroughly. There’s no way the date was going to end up this bad.”

Then you get deflated.  And you start wondering what you did wrong. You did all the “game day” prep right. But what you didn’t realize was, it’s all about the game itself!

Don’t spend so much time flirting with women online. Don’t spend so much time talking to her on the phone. Don’t spend so much time texting somebody you’ve never met. Get to the date as fast as possible so you can play the game. Don’t make it a three hour game; make it a one hour game.  Get coffee and that’s it. Make it short, sweet, and to the point.

The more prep work you do, the harder it’s going to be for you to recover from a date that went bad. Think about this analogy carefully, and enjoy the football game tonight. Any score predictons?