Four Ways to Get Over the Texans Loss (Without Bloodshed)

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Dejected fans plotting how they'll vent on Facebook and Twitter.

You've had a terrible beginning to the week. It's okay. We all did. Sunday night, things went badly for Houston. The Green Bay Packers made the vaunted Texan defense look like a bunch of chumps, ending the team's undefeated streak, eliciting all sorts of troubling questions, and the city does mourn.

You've had a terrible week. And that's okay.

At least nobody died.

This, however, cannot be said for one man who was stabbed to death at a Texans' party near Cavalcade following the game. Police haven't yet released the identity of the man, or his alleged killer. Sports has long invoked violence and death, possibly the most famous example being when Colombian goalie Andrés Escobar was killed after letting in a goal at the 1994 World Cup.

Let's take a breather, people. There are other means to relieve sports angst.

4. Stop reading about the loss. Avoid ESPN.
There's little that sportscasters love to do more -- other than displaying gratuitous levels of machismo -- than to harangue against a highly rated team that got bamboozled.

They'll trot out every sports cliché that makes our brain hurt for a) abject unoriginality and b) because they're true. The Texans weren't "physical enough." They were "due for a dud." They just "got punched in the mouth." This isn't what "great teams" do. (Reality: That's nonsense. More on that later.)

The simplest way to get over the loss is to avoid ESPN and the newspapers altogether. They'll only sink you deeper into your football-infused melancholy. It's in these institutions' natures to exaggerate everything -- ARE THE TEXANS FINISHED? -- so expect it, play it cool and act above the bloviations.

3. Rethink what you're about to do on Facebook and Twitter.
Everyone knows you're bummed. It's a given. Lay off Facebook. All you're going to do is make other people feel bad. We understand that this action may at first seem cathartic, but really, it elongates the malaise. Like this:

Right or not, having lost to a perennially elite team, Texans fans should get ready for a week's worth of "Are the Texans for real" talk

— Rich Eisen (@richeisen) October 15, 2012

Quiet, Rich Eisen. What does this accomplish but to upset people, informing them of something they already knew? (This can be extrapolated to explain 98.79 percent of all tweets.)