Today, as all political pundits know, is the opening of football metaphor season! Since football is getting underway tonight, it becomes entirely appropriate and seasonal to once again start talking about politics in the language of the gridiron.

Trump tackles Fiorina! Self-declared refs Bush and Walker call unnecessary roughness!

CNN moves goalposts for debate inclusion!

Obama does endzone dance after Iran deal victory!

Sanders continues to advance the ball against Hillary!

As you can see, the metaphors are all quite easy to apply to politics, because after a while the "horserace" metaphor only goes so far, and football metaphors are so much more varied (and more fun). Admittedly, pundits don't routinely get flagged for use of football metaphors outside of the season, but I personally like to at least emphasize them in a timely manner.

Which is all a roundabout (and hopefully somewhat humorous) way of leading up to my decision to punt on today's column. No, I am not precisely in a fourth-and-long situation here, but I have been woefully neglecting the comments section of my blog for approximately the past two weeks, as the lazy days of summer draw to a close. So instead of writing a column on, for instance, the Senate successfully filibustering the Iran deal disapproval bill, I am going to devote the time it would have taken to write a real column today to answering past comments. I'll post updates on my progress in the comments section of this article, perhaps with links to where my new comments begin on each article.

As for other comments, I throw the doors open to any subject you might wish to comment upon today, from how Stephen Colbert is doing in his new gig to Bobby Jindal comparing Trump to Charlie Sheen (the whole "winning!" thing) -- but in the spirit of the times, I would ask everyone to include at least one football metaphor in your comment. Canadians will be given an extra ten yards to do so (heh), since they play by different rules up yonder.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant