We have just a few more days to wait before next week’s Wednesday launch of the NFL regular season. My excitement is down a notch in large part because I won’t see hardly any action in real time.

I work during all four of the Sunday/Monday game slots and there’s no television in the work space I’ve been relocated to. The job’s so busy I wouldn’t have time to look at a TV screen even if there was one.

I’m free for the Thursday nighter but my cable provider is the lone holdout (among the majors) without a contract to carry the NFL Network now that Cablevision cut a deal with the league.

There’s also part of me that believes football’s extinction is a matter of when – not if. So why bother getting wrapped up in a sport that will shut down little by little starting at the high school level (which is the best all-around version of the game experience from a fan’s standpoint).

Despite these personal constraints, I’ll try to keep up with the Jets and their circus. I’ll keep an eye on my Mizzou Tigers as they get knocked around by Georgia, Alabama and new conference rivals in the SEC. I plan on hitting a high school game back in suburban Chicago in a month.

I’m also gonna revive this website’s long dormant discussion of punters and punting. Each week of the NFL season, TSR will review the performance of a single punter. Seventeen weeks. Seventeen punters. The new feature will keep me engaged with the art of punting even though I’ll be out of the loop on Sunday afternoons. I mean, I’d rather be in my chair at home with cold beer, hot pizza and the clicker doing the noon to midnight football-on-tv routine. But since I can’t do that, I’ll sit down when the weekend’s over and watch a game on tape.

TSR has chosen rookie Steelers punter Drew Butler as the focus for the first week of this new feature. Butler has not yet officially won the punting job in Pittsburgh but he will. He’s the son of legendary Bears kicker Kevin Butler. He’s been boomin’ em in the preseason.

Look for an installment of TSR’s “Punter of the Week” every week during the NFL season. If you have a favorite punter you’d like included beyond Butler in week 1, submit a suggestion in the comments section below.

-Despite a NFL assertion that it will start the regular season with replacement officials, I believe you’ll see the union stripes back on the field in time for Wednesday’s opener. The pressure on Roger Goodell to cut a deal with locked-out union refs has grown exponentially since players’ union boss DeMaurice Smith hinted at a player revolt if the dispute isn’t settled. SI’s Peter King says it would cost the league only about $2 mil annual to settle with the regulars. That’s total chump change given the likely chaos that would unfold if the current batch of confused rookie call-ups work the regular season.

-Hannah Lew of the band Grass Widow has recorded a beautiful cover version of the great Mantles tune “Don’t Lie.” You can stream the number at Lew’s Tumblr page which features several excellent demos. The Mantles were the first act of five to play the first day of Woodsist Fest 2012.