It was a national nightmare wrapped in catastrophe, but it is finally over. At long last, the 2011 NFL lockout has come to an end. It was pretty touch and go there for a while, but cooler heads prevailed. Although the work stoppage would have had to persist for over four more months if it were to interfere at all with the 2011 regular season, football fans across the country and around the world can rejoice that the highlight of the NFL entering the autumn will not be NFL Player’s Association executive director DeMaurice Smith’s hats. As kick-ass as Smith’s fedora arsenal might be, I feel that I can speak for the legions of civilians that fund this nine billion dollar industry that we all expect to be ready for some football come September.

Granted, although U.S. District Court judge Susan Richard Nelson ruled in favor of the players union in ordering the NFL owners to lift the lockout, the league is not quite back on firm ground yet. The owners are already in the process of appealing Nelson’s ruling to the Eighth Circuit Court; if the court chooses to hear the case, the NFL will be transformed into a legal merry-go-round once again. Also, even if the Eighth Circuit Court denies the appeal and the lockout is permanently ended, there is the matter of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), or the absence thereof. Without a CBA in place, the labor relations of the NFL invariably descend into disarray. Teams can operate without spending limits! The free agency landscape becomes a Wild West free-for-all! Peyton Hillis is selected to be on the cover of Madden NFL 12! It’s a madhouse! A madhouse!

(Tangent: alright, Peyton Hillis making the Madden cover has nothing to do with the labor situation, but can we all agree that a Cleveland Brown pulling off a monumental upset to win a league popularity contest is pretty indicative of the pandemonium that is this offseason? Are we all on board with that sentiment? Okay, good.)

I just have one question about this whole thing: why in Roger Goodell’s name were we fans all so worked up about the lockout? The old CBA expired on March 3, the lockout was lifted on April 25, and the sports media covered the legal proceedings every single day, whether anything had actually proceeded or not. Let’s be serious here, the NFL lockout was a potpourri of pettiness, and yet it was front and center in the sports-viewing public consciousness. It combined a financial conflict between the filthy, stinking rich and the simply stinking rich. A legal drama completely immersed in America’s favorite sport, so much so that NFL draft prospect Von Miller’s first interaction with the league will now, and forever be, as a defendant alongside the NFLPA. The media coverage was so fascinating it was second only to CSPAN in terms of gripping stories.

In all of the English language, I cannot think of a word that properly describes such an amalgamation of inconsequential bickering masquerading as a monolithic, cataclysmic breaking new story, so I am forced to make one up. To Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith, I offer my congratulations. You, good sirs, have overseen the creation of the first turclusterfucken in sports history. I would say it is the first turclusterfucken in world history, although I bet this categorization would be used quite copiously in Washington, D.C. had it existed before last sentence.

So, where do we go from here? Do we, as a cohesive sports-viewing public, have it in us to go back to our traditional lives of ingesting every training camp rumor? Or has this harrowing past month and a half been too much? Can we really be expected to provide the level of emotion necessary to the issue of Cam Newton becoming the first player taken first overall in the NFL Draft to have already had a statue commissioned in his likeness? Are we ready to commit that much again?

Hey, wait—a statue of Cam Newton? Auburn University commissioned a statue of Cam Newton? The guy was only there one year! His last game for the Tigers was just three months ago! After all of the controversy surrounding Newton, whether his fault or not, after all of the damage done to the image of the Tigers and Auburn at large from an ethical standpoint, they commissioned a statue of the guy before he is even on an NFL team? That’s absurd!

Wait—all right then. Maybe we’re not going to have much of an issue with the transition after all. Welcome back, National Football League. Our days of overreacting to you are finally over.