What a Run!

After missing most of the regular season of football, I have rekindled my passion these last two weekends during the playoff games. Didn't hurt that both local teams were still in the running when we began, wink wink. I think the kids are surprised that Mom, who almost never watches TV, has been glued to the screen during much of these games, albeit with a stack of photos to snip and place in albums or my latest crocheting project. Mom also knows a lot about NFL football, it would seem. Huh?

Wasn't always that way. Growing up, I was scared of football and thought it was for refrigerator sized guys who didn't mind taking the risk of getting killed or maimed out there. Then I went away to college and moved into a dorm complex where recreational coed two hand touch football was part of the culture. Each floor of each wing of each of the five buildings fielded a team. Each floor designed its own jerseys, which usually had a team name with a double entendre (football + sex, typical). Each player's jersey had on the back of it a number plus a name -- generally not the player's actual name but often another attempt at humor, subtle or otherwise. For instance, one year our team was called Second Coming. My "name" was Ready to Receive. My roommate's was Attraction. Get it?

Another interesting feature of coed dorm football in our residential college was that the team on the field at any given moment had to be at least half women, and a woman had to be the quarterback. Good grief! Well, since I couldn't run/catch/throw but was on the tall side with bony elbows, I was put in as a blocker. The first semester of my "career" our team had zero wins so we qualified to play in the Soup Bowl of our division -- the honor for the two worst teams. As luck would have it, all the other females with more athletic ability than I were unable to play that day, so I was elected to be quarterback. YIPERS! All I could reasonably do was either hand off the ball to someone who could run or hit someone with a short pass just off the line of scrimmage and hope that person could run. Well...it turns out we actually won the Soup Bowl 7-0. Some people felt we should've lost so we could be proud of a consistently losing season. Et donc, c'est la guerre.

After all that, I realized that there was a lot more to football than breaking bones and quickly became a lifelong fan. I'm looking forward to the real Super Bowl in a few weeks. Gotta get crackin' with cooking etc.!!!