Ah, football Sunday, my altar of worship. There is no time of the year that gets me more excited than the start of the NFL season. I like all sports, though some more than others and while I can even watch NASCAR, it’s only if nothing else is on. Thing is, I don’t remember when I first started watching. I never played anything and aside from intramural floor hockey and softball in fifth grade and there was one particularly good flag football game in Central Park a couple years back, but aside from that I am the eternal spectator. So why the love of sports? And why, when I was asked tonight about my earliest football memory could I not come up with anything at all?
I remember baseball. I grew up a Red’s fan in the days when double headers in the afternoon still existed. We’d drive to Cincinnati and spend all day at the ballpark . Back then baseball was different. You’d watch seven hours of ball and leave the stadium having watched two games with scores like 1-0 and 2-1. The jumbo-tron distractions didn’t exist, every batter didn’t have his own music as he walked to the plate, and no one tried to make it more exciting by turning a game into a home run derby. Baseball was more 1950’s Americana then, innocent, relaxing, and cheap enough that you could afford to take your family. I don’t remember my first double header, but my Mother told me I was two and after the national anthem of the first game I asked if it was over yet. Not a promising start, but my love affair with sports did begin there.
These days, it is football that I watch for hours on end, rapt with anticipation for the next snap, and guessing out loud at the penalty before the ref calls it. Football has my heart and soul and yet I cannot remember my first dance with it. I am still loyal the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team I grew up loving because it was my Pop’s team. Turns out, I was loyal and he was just on the 70’s dynasty team bandwagon, which is okay, I still love him. Football was made for Sundays or Sundays for it, I’m not sure, but there is definitely something special about a day watching the games with friends, drinking pints and having pub food, yelling at the TV, stat tracking your fantasy players, and high-fiving strangers. A great day of watching football is better than Christmas.
The smells, the sounds, the communal feeling of watching a game is what I love. We had Sunday Ticket on DirectTV one year and decided we did not like it. Watching in your living room just doesn’t have the same energy as being down at the pub with a group of cheering fans. Not that I don’t relish those lazy Sunday afternoons when your team is the featured game. Curled up on the couch with your loved one and ordering take-out is somehow comforting. Football, and sports in general to a certain degree, makes me feel – at least for a while—that life is okay. I can forget all the things I need to do, the turmoil in other nations around the globe, the poverty, the homeless, my own joblessness, the dirty apartment, the extra five pounds I put on. You can forget it all, because for those few hours you watch the game that is your world. That team is your team and every score is a part of you. That’s my running back! Oh hell yeah, that’s my receiver snagging that one-handed catch!
I think I started watching to be able to spend time with Pop, but as an adult sports has become a gateway to conversations with countless people. The night I met my husband we talked about football, a conversation he still sites as part of the reason he fell in love with me. It’s not just a game, it’s a feeling as well as a bridge to building a spirit of community. Every Sunday I go to the same pub and I know who will be there. I know where they like to sit, what kind of beer they drink and who they root for. I may not remember their name, but for those three plus months they are my friends and we’re in this together.
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