How We Watch Football

It was a good weekend for football around here. All four of our teams won again. Them Cowboys are on a roll, beating the reigning NFC champions Chicago Bears. They turned Da Bears into Duh, Bears.

Some have hailed this guy

as the return of this guy:

I don't know if I'd go that far, but he just keeps on getting better and better.

For our September Football-Along project, we are to describe how we watch football in our family. Frankly, it's pretty low key here, because Cody doesn't really like to watch the games. He wants his teams to win, but he doesn't like to sit through an entire game. Mostly, it's just me and my knitting.

Funny, most men wish their wives/girlfriends would watch football with them, or a the very least not say, "Are you watching football again????" Me? I wish I had a man to watch football with.

Football has pretty much always been a part of my life. I grew up watching the Dallas Cowboys play. For a while, Cowboy football games were a regular Sunday afternoon fixture around my house. When I was 6 years old, my Daddy taught me how to play chess sitting at our card table in front of a Cowboys game. I was never that enthusiastic about chess (I liked the knights best because they rode little horses), but playing the game with Daddy while watching a game on TV is one of my fondest memories from childhood.

I vividly remember watching The Cowboys win Superbowl VI. I also remember my mother telling us that we'd better be glad they won, because if they'd lost she'd be too upset to fix supper, and we'd have had to go hungry.

My parents' enthusiasm eventually waned, but mine never did. After one particularly disappointing game, my dad said, "If they don't start playing better, I'm going to start following the Houston Oilers," and the whole world rocked from my gasp of disbelief. I couldn't believe my daddy would abandon our Cowboys! It was like sacrilege or something. Fortunately, he wasn't serious. Just momentarily frustrated. My brother, on the other hand, took his words to heart and became a Houston Oiler fan. His room was decorated with Oiler stuff, while mine had abundant Cowboy stuff. And I had a lot of Cowboy stuff in my room. I had two team posters, pictures, mini helmets, banners--I even subscribed to The Dallas Cowboys Weekly newspaper.

I grew up in a strict Southern Baptist home. We went to church on Sunday nights. It didn't matter if the Cowboys were still playing. It didn't matter if it was a playoff game, or the NFC title game, or even the Superbowl. We went to church on Sunday nights. Period. I saw lots of first halves, but very few second halves. I would have to wait until the Monday evening news came on to find out if my team had won. But then, when I was 14, my life changed forever. My grandma died.

Not too long after, my grandfather remarried. Vivian presented us kids with a bit of a conundrum. We weren't sure what to call her. We were just kids, so calling her "Vivian" seemed disrespectful and rude. But we also didn't want to call her "Grandma" because, well, she wasn't Grandma. Grandma was Grandma. Finally, my sister just flat out asked Vivian what we should call her.

"Just call me Granny, like the rest of my grandchildren do," she said. And from that day on, she was Granny, and we were her grandchildren as much as those of her blood were.

Granny was as big a Dallas Cowboy fan as I was. Maybe even bigger. It was so great to finally have a Cowboy buddy again. Granny was the one who taught me to sneak into the church office on Sunday nights and watch the games on the TV in there. That's where she was watching them. I knew I would get into trouble for doing that, but I didn't care. I thought it was worth it. It was in the church office that I watched the heartbreaking loss to the SF 49ers in the NFC title game. That was the last time I ever watched a game in the church office.

After I graduated from high school, I pretty much quit watching football. I pretty much quit watching T.V. altogether. I still kept up with the Cowboys, though, and railed when Tom Landry was fired so unjustly. I was overseas in the Military when Troy Aikman led them to three Superbowl wins. But it was when I was in one of my Navy schools in Ft. Gordon, GA that I truly realized how deeply ingrained football was in my life.

I was at my instructor's house for Thanksgiving dinner. How I got there is the subject of another post altogether. The short version is that he gathered up all the people on base who had no where else to go and took them home with him. Also there was a guy from Australia named Darren (I think--memory is a little rusty on that). Naturally, after dinner, the football game was turned on. Dallas Cowboys, of course. Darren, being from Australia, and not the athletic kind anyway, didn't have a clue as to what was going on. I was trying to explain things to him, i.e Me:"It's fourth down. They have to punt." Him: "What's a down?" It never occurred to me that someone wouldn't know what a down was.

What was really amusing, though, was Darren's reaction every time someone got tackled. "I can't believe he's getting up!" "I can't believe he's not hurt!" After one particularly bone jarring tackle, one in which the crunching and grunting came over the TV loud and clear (this was before the days when players are regularly miked up), Darren exclaimed, "I can't believe he walked away from that! I was waiting for the ambulance to come get him." Seeing the game through Darren's eyes gave me a whole new appreciation for it.

After I got out of the Navy, I still didn't regularly watch football. I only got one of the major networks where I lived, and they didn't (and still don't) show a lot of it. Last fall, however, I moved into a new house, and where it is located, I can now get all 4 networks. One Saturday afternoon, I was doing a little house work and decided it was too quiet. I turned on the TV. A football game was on. It all came rushing back. The sights. The sounds. The excitement. I was hooked once again.

It was like coming home.

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