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Such is the fuss and fury of the modern NRL, amplified and accelerated by the now remorseless media and social media cycle, a day can seem like an eternity.
Not just because you have barely gotten your head around the details on the arrest sheet of one miscreant before you are forced to comprehend the charges on another. ("He videoed what?")
Because the pace of change in everything from playing lists to sponsorship logos is so hectic, the comforting sense of familiarity you once had at the start of the season has long been replaced by constant reminders of the game's built-in obsolescence.
Then there is Wayne Bennett, who — when he takes his place in the South Sydney box for the season-opener against the Sydney Roosters on Friday night — will be coaching in the NRL for a 33rd consecutive season with his fifth club.
For context, only two South Sydney players, John Sutton, 35, and Greg Inglis, 31, were born when Bennett co-coached the Raiders in 1987.
Back when Bob Hawke was Prime Minister, Kylie Minogue's Locomotion topped the charts, and the 37-year-old Bennett only looked about 55.
This feat of longevity will not seem as stunning to baked-on rugby league fans as it does to those merely peeking over the fence.
To NRL stalwarts, Bennett has become like the dot on the crossbar — if not quite taken for granted then so familiar he only consciously registers when something extraordinary happens.
The latest extraordinary reminder of Bennett's occupation came in the bizarre postscript to the 2018 season, when NRL coaches were rotating like plates of pork dumplings on a Lazy Susan.
During this unedifying saga, Bennett was forced into the undignified position of having to pretend he would honour his contract to coach the Broncos even as life-forms on distant planets knew he would be replaced by South Sydney's highly fashionable Anthony Seibold.
Bennett's survival in a cut-throat occupation was — in his first quarter or so — indisputably the consequence of unparalleled achievement and the reverential status both this success and his gruff, enigmatic nature created.
There were heretics. Even as Bennett won an astonishing six premierships with the Broncos, some continued to insist — to borrow the words of another Queensland copper, Bill Hayden — that a drover's dog could have won six titles with a Broncos outfit that fielded a virtual State of Origin team.
Then Bennett left for St George-Illawarra, won the 2010 premiership with the seemingly-cursed Dragons and proved, once and for all it seemed, that his storied methods of player management could be successfully applied beyond the Brisbane city limits.
Then came the failed union with Nathan Tinkler's Newcastle Knights, three mostly abject years that loaded the guns of critics who muttered the fabled coach had been more obsessed with providing an income for his large family than winning a premiership for a sports-loving community that was left feeling used and betrayed.
The final scene of any made-for-movie Bennett story would have been the great coach returning to Brisbane to win the seventh and most cherished title.
Instead, as Bennett stubbornly fulfilled his contractual obligations and the Broncos struggled to find a dignified way to say goodbye, the ending was more like a failed relationship on Married at First Sight.
And that, for anyone else, would have been that.
Australian sport is not a seller's market for 69-year-old coaches with no titles in their past eight seasons and a famously prickly nature.
The average age of this season's 16 NRL coaches is 48.8 — 47.5 if you don't include Bennett — with only four other coaches 50 or older.
In the AFL the average is just 46.8. The late-to-head-coaching Brisbane boss Chris Fagan, 61, is the outlier in a competition where 11 of the 18 coaches are 48 or younger.
Once the relative young average age of Australian coaches was compared unfavourably with America's NFL, where experience was seen to be treasured far more than here.
Yet, in the past three years, the average of the NFL head coach has plummeted from 53.4 to 49.4 as clubs become more inclined — like those in the NRL and AFL — to appoint the new buzz assistant than recycle a veteran.
So, is Bennett's record and reputation for man management so exceptional that he defied the current wisdom about the expendability of veteran coaches and the superiority of younger replacements? Or are clubs still blinded by his aura?
Perhaps only Russell Crowe can tell you. Because South Sydney's decision to replace the highly-rated Seibold with the man he usurped in Brisbane seemed at once an extraordinary gamble, as well as the ultimate statement about Bennett's vast stature.
So, on Friday night Bennett will enter that incredible 33rd consecutive season in different colours and rugby league fans will barely bat an eyelid.
For them it's a matter of: "It's March, it must be Benny."
Yet, some of us will consider Bennett's very appearance remarkable and intriguing.
It didn't happen in Newcastle, it didn't happen in Brisbane. But if Bennett can win another title with South Sydney he would add the most affirming chapter to an extraordinary story.
It's tempting to say it would be an extraordinary ending.
But Bennett is only 69.
Topics: rugby-league, sport, australia, newcastle-2300, redfern-2016, sydney-2000, brisbane-4000
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