The NFL preseason is pretty much a waste of time. The last game is a total farce. There are about a billion reasons why I hate everything about this week’s NFL games, but here are seven to start:

1. No one tries – Pretty much every team has answered their big questions by now. Those that haven’t don’t want to risk getting hurt. The rash of big name inuries in the preseason this year – Osi Umenyiora, Jason Taylor, Shawne Merriman, Chad Johnson, Tom Brady, etc. – will do nothing to help. The starters will start, but they will be on the bench so fast it will be laughable.

2. No one cares – the only reason anyone attends these games is that they have to pay for them with their season tickets anyway (at full price, no less). No one wants to be there, so the stadiums are dull and lifeless.

3. The spreads are ridiculous – As I write there are three games without lines. All the rest of the games have spreads between two and four. What a thrilling range. Not that it should matter anyway – you would have to be a serious degenerate to play this weekend heavily.

4. Unwatchable matchups – St. Louis at Kansas City. Oakland at Seattle. The Geneva Convention bans us from showing games like these to our worst enemies.

5. Thursday night games – This week’s schedule includes 13 Thursday night games and three on Friday. Nothing says NFL like Thursdays and Fridays.

6. More time for talking heads to talk – The TV experts are almost unbearable at the best of times. They are worse when they are faced with a dull, meaningless game and they feel the need to fill the time with their ‘insights’. There will be some truly idiotic things said and discussed. Of course, I’ll just do the fool proof approach to avoiding this certain loss of brain cells – I won’t watch any games.

7. Simplified playbooks – Coaches are paranoid, and they won’t want to give away any of their special plays this close to the season. Instead, they’ll borrow a playbook from the local Pop Warner team. Yawn.