I'm Not Much for Football

What's funny, though, is I can see it happening now. I follow the teams of the ACC, CUSA, and SEC with casual interest. I find my loyalties follow old ones related to basketball since that's really my sport of choice for which to be a spectator. And there's tennis, of course, a sport I've been semi-avid about since I learned how to play it at camp one summer a million years ago. (Okay, okay. I got hooked in the era of Bjorn Borg. I have no idea why now beyond admiring his tennis, but I really crushed on him when I was pubescent.) I'm an Olympics junkie too. No question of that. I love having them alternate the Summer and Winter games so I only have to wait a year in between games. What I really find amusing about myself is how I'm now into minor league baseball to a small degree because I've lived in two cities with ballparks just a few minutes' walk away. After a while the news about the Bulls and the Redbirds started to creep into my awareness and I started paying attention.

Granted, the fall of Tiger Woods pretty much killed my interest in golf. It may return since I seem to live in areas with interesting tournaments. I began watching the PGA after running across Woods' last National Amateur Championship match one day. That young man from Stanford really impressed me with his focus and mad golfing skills. The female in me, however, is thoroughly disgusted with the man he is now and it has tainted any enjoyment I used to have for the game. It's not so much that he disrespected and betrayed his wife and kids, but that he demonstrated a blatant disregard for their well-being by sleeping with dozens of women sans condoms. Perhaps he's never known someone personally who is HIV positive who takes huge numbers of pills a day in an effort to stay alive or someone who's died of AIDS. I have and do. Because of that, I find his irresponsible choices abhorrent and downright ignorant. He graduated from Stanford for heaven's sake! This is not a stupid man. You know he had to spend time in San Francisco occasionally and he's certainly been around people in show business. It's just so idiotic. And now? I don't give a frak about golf any more.

Oof. I'm supposed to be typing about football. Sorry. I'm about as disgusted with Tiger Woods as I will always be with John Edwards, but that's another post entirely.

When I was in high school, I was in marching band. The only reason I did marching band, or so I told myself, was because I was the fat girl who found the idea of taking a gym class nightmarish. Marching band fulfilled my PE requirement and thus it was a no-brainer. In the end, however, I came to love the 6 A.M. practices on the wet football field and playing during half-time for our pitiful home games. For me, football is inexorably tied to marching band, and to my dad, of course. He was in marching band from high school through college. Granted, he was a trombonist and I a flutist, but we both marched in Southern summers' sweltering heat and also wretched rainy Christmas parades in wet uniforms and soggy shoes. At least neither of us had to march in snow. I've seen folks do that and I just bless them and shake my haidbone in gratitude that I've pretty much always lived below that ol' Mason-Dixon Line.

I digressed again, didn't I? Ah well. You see, when I lived in Oxford, Mississippi, I lived near a high school and one of my greatest pleasures was sitting on my front porch in the mornings, listening to the marching band practice. When I drove by the school during the fall, I would see the band practicing on the flat front lawn of the school because the football field was being used for, um, football practice. Imagine that! On Friday nights, I'd go out on my porch and listen to the football game being called on the loudspeakers in the stadium. I always meant to go to a game when I lived there, but I never did. I suppose since I didn't have any direct ties to the school, like a kid or a teacher friend or somesuch, that I felt like I would have been an interloper. That was silly, of course, since I paid taxes and whatnot to help support that football program and that school, but I have weird pockets of shyness that appear in silly ways.

As to my current interest in college football? Well, it's because I went to college in Mississippi at an SEC school and because of Seth Greenberg, men's basketball coach at Virginia Tech. I spend every football season now rooting against my alma mater for rather complicated reasons. (I used to root for the basketball team, but I despise Andy Kennedy, but like Edwards, that's another post.) In the SEC my loyalties are to Mississippi State because of their truly awesome Ag school that teaches people to make cheese and grows the bamboo for the panda bears at the Memphis Zoo. And yeah, they usually have a good football team too. As for the influence of Greenberg? Well, I love that man. I have for years now. I just think he's the most lovely man and great coach. Anyhoo, Seth (I call him Seth in my mind, but on Twitter I call him Coach if I type at him) is such an enthusiastic fan of all Hokies sports. He was completely bummed by the first two losses the Hokies had this season, but he kept on Tweeting about how they'll rally because that's what Hokies do and, well, I find his passion for all things Hokies a real delight. So today when the Hokies beat ECU? I was thrilled!

And yes, I really enjoyed the whomping of Duke by 'Bama too. Duke has for their football coach the dude what left Ole Miss in the lurch when I was still living in Oxford. Child, those Rebel fans were ticked off and that guy must still have all kinds of bad juju pointed in his direction at any given time. Duke's massive loss to 'Bama, an SEC team, made a lot of Rebels' fans very happy today. I guarantee it.

There are good football games on tonight, by the way. If I weren't watching TCM's homage to Maurice Chevalier and pleasing my inner Francophile, I'd probably have football on the TV. Really.

Lordy, I'm odd.