There was definitely a time when I didn’t enjoy sitting down and watching football. I grew up in a baseball family and I found football to be unnecessarily riddled with timeouts, whistle blowing and penalties. It’s interesting that I didn’t find the ten minute at-bats, overweight managers in baseball uniforms and constant spitting to be irritating but I’ll chalk that up to naivete.
Anyway, once I began to ask football questions and develop an affinity for particular teams, it was pretty obvious to me why stadiums are packed and fans bleed their team colors. My first “favorite” team were the Jacksonville Jaguars because we lived there for the inaugural season and shared some season tickets with our good friends, Sam and Sarah. Mark Brunell was THE man in Jax…still love him and find it unbelievable that he now has graying temples and is referred to as the old man by that little kid, Mark Sanchez.
So my football interest was birthed there and extended to the college ranks WAY before Tim Tebow. I can tell you this ~ moving to the west coast was pretty detrimental to my fanaticism of UF and the Jaguars and though I tried to be a Redskins fan while living back on the east coast in Virginia, it didn’t take. It was then that I understood the true blue loyalty of naming a team and sticking with ’em through thick and thin. There’s nothing worse than a “bandwagon” fan.
Now I’ll admit, I’m still happy to hear when the Jaguars win even though I haven’t lived there since 1998 but the Buccaneers are my team~ this is my hometown and even without Gruden’s scowl that I miss so much ~ this is it. My team.
And my Gators? Well, sorry guys….as soon as my son became a Seminole, you had to go. Besides, I never looked very good in blue and orange. Garnet is far more suited to my skintone. (Calm down, I’m only joking about that part….kinda).
Like every good resident, one tries to embrace the local guys and sometimes that’s pretty tough (like when I tried really hard to like the Dodgers, for instance) so understand that isn’t considered waffling. That’s just making the best out of a bad situation. That’s adapting to your surroundings. 🙂
Bottom line? What did I do before spending weekends traveling to Doak Campbell Stadium or schlepping across the bridge to The Trop? Before being glued to the tv or my ESPN app? I remember now. We were watching our two favorite athletes do their thing on fields across SoCal to NoVa and many places in between.
Since I can’t have those days back, the ‘Noles, Bucs and Rays will have to do. And they all do it so well. Thanks for making my weekends brighter.