OSU...Who?

I was raised by rabid Auburn fans, in a time when the great Bear Bryant would pull a miracle out of his pants pocket and, literally, jerk the game right away from you, when the Bama cheerleaders would bow down to the goal posts and my mother said that it was proof enough that they worshiped and loved football more than they did God. And, that was reason enough to hate them.  She was only half-kidding.

I remember years of football, years where emotions were dictated by a pointy brown ball on a field. I’ve dedicated whole Saturdays to the games, put up with a moody father when Auburn lost our modern day “brother against brother” version of the “Civil War" - the Iron Bowl against Alabama - or any other game for that matter, put up with a moody Ohio State fan husband after losses to teams I‘ve never even heard of, years where cold weather made me crave the sound of sports announcers -in fact, the best sleep I ever get is in front of a game.

Some of my earliest memories are of the sounds of football. My parents said that I called it “shoe-ball” and I remember staring at the screen and wondering where they found so many men with big shoulders to play and how come I never saw any of them out in the “real world.” It was only after I asked my parents about this that I learned about shoulder pads.

(I grew up in Georgia and became a Georgia fan at an early age - one of my favorite memories is going to an Auburn/ Georgia game in middle school. I went as a Georgia fan, the whole rest of my family went as Auburn fans.
Georgia won (heehee heehee.)
 As an adult we lived up above LA for a while and couldn’t get SEC football or Big Ten ball. I discovered, apologies to Will  Ferrell, the Oregon Ducks. They are so delightfully weird - among other things, they go for it on 4th down, they go for two often, about 25% of their plays are sent in by pictures on poster board, and they don’t wear uniforms, they wear costumes-the yellow shoes, oh my!  Any one who has the balls to have a duck for a mascot has got my vote. I always think of the saying, “pecked to death by ducks,” when I watch them play. They make me giggle. )

(Ohio State's
mascot is a nut.
A nut. Named Brutus.
It shouldn't even have legs!
Or...arms.

 <giggle>
I love you, Honey!)

For those of you not inducted into the South Eastern Conference of college football, either from birth or from circumstance, this may be hard to explain to you.  I had never met fans quite as ridiculous as Auburn/Alabama  fans until I met my husband and discovered the Big Ten Conference's Ohio State/Michigan Rivalry. Those fans come close. (Georgia/Florida, also close.) But this insanity is not one that is limited to the SEC or the Big Ten or even college football, in general - all you have to do is watch the chaos of  a pro football game or the shenanigans of a baseball game or the deadly crowd antics of an overseas soccer game, to realize that this is universal. Right outside my hometown, not that long ago, a parent pulled a knife on another parent at a kids’ T-Ball game. A T-Ball game.

No, this “crazy” seems to be everywhere where human beings gather. My grandmother’s fanaticism (yes, “fan” comes from “fanatic”) increased as she aged. These are my memories of her - this sweet old lady on the couch talking out loud to her soaps or screaming at football on Tv,

"Get him! Get him! Get him!" 

hahahaha
She was cute. And, I miss her.

As I’ve gotten older (here it comes) the competion has lost something for me. I don’t get it anymore. Okay, I get it but I don’t like it.  When it’s fun, it’s fun but when it’s not, it’s really not. It gets way too serious, sometimes. When the fans (and the players, sometimes even the coaches-Steve Spurrier and his visor is JUST FUNNY!) act in ways that make me cringe, I just want to turn off the Tv and refuse to ever again hunt Ebay for tickets.

GameDay's Lee Corso putting on mascots’ heads (or his own head, ha!) and playfully bantering back and forth, watching my superstious husband change his clothes at half-time in order to try to turn the tide of a game = fun.

Fans screaming and hollering obsenities and calling each other (and the refs) names, the players throwing punches, coaches not reprimanding (and sometimes encouraging) said players throwing punches, or worse = not fun.

My  hubby says that it is a “primal level, us and them.”

Okay, I got that.

Only, this is not hundreds of years ago where the outcome of “us and them” dictated who lived or died that day.

This is just guys in colored jerseys on an arbitrary field of grass. Most spectators didn’t even go to the schools involved and, if they did, the years that they roamed the halls of said schools or were even somewhat intimately involved with the pride of going to the school is long past. But that's not limited to college ball. There are MANY people who are deadly serious about a pro-team but have never even lived in the STATE where the team resides.

I think a little perspective is needed sometimes.

Odds are that most spectators don’t know any of the coaching staff or any of the kids on the field.

Odds are that most spectators don’t make any money from the outcome of the games (- if someone is silly enough to bet on something in which they have no real participation and therefore no control at all of the outcome, then, I think, they deserve to lose their little colored Monopoly money.)

Odds are that most spectators lives will not change one iota if their team wins or loses. They literally have no REAL vested interest in what happens. Except for their pride.

Pride is a miserable thing to lose friends and integrity over.

It’s just a game.

No matter if “my” team wins or loses, in the morning the sun will still come up, my kids will still eat, my spouse will still love me and I won’t be fired from my job. ( Who'd want to fire me? I take care of a 4 yo and a 3 yo - nobody wants my job. hahahaha)

If my colors did badly, well, there’s always the next game.

If my colors did really well, there’s….well, there’s always the next game.

Sometimes, I just have to remind myself of this again:

G.A.M.E.
It’s suppose to be fun.
Chill to the Out.

(And, go Dawgs and Ducks! Woof  Woof! Quack Quack!)