Brace Yourselves

>> Monday, August 31, 2009

Football season is upon us. This coming week is the days I've been waiting for. This coming Thursday kicks off football season. I know, I know, we have been suffering through NFL preseason scrimmages and other junk for a month now, but this Thursday kicks off College Football!!!!! YAY!!!!!

I decided that for those of you who don't know me personally, I owe you some fair warnings. First, there will be football in this blog. I can't help it, football is in my blood. Second, there will be disparaging remarks made about Ohio State, Michigan, and Bobby Bowden. Third, and most important, this household contains rabid Penn State fans. We own lots of blue and white, and we do think Joe Paterno is as good as it gets. He may be 80 something, but he can whip your butt, and that takes grit. Last, we like the Aflac duck, and we do not pretend to be balanced in our commentary on various teams. Nope. Very biased here.

Okay, now that we've got that straight, I hope there will be no huge shocks for anyone. For those of you that are not football fans, I have to say it isn't really all that hard to learn. Kids are not born with this in their blood. They are taught, and with the proper amount of motivation, anyone can become an avid watcher and love it.

Let's take my sisters and me, for example. Two of us love football. One of us tolerates it. All three of us know an awful lot about it. Two of us have been told over the years that we know more football than "any other woman I have ever met." One of us knows almost as much, but chooses to say nothing. Trust me, she knows.

So how is it that all three of us came to know so much about the sport? I'll admit, a lot of our analysis came from our mom -- she knew her stuff in her day, before Ohio State got an inflated ego and she began to mistakenly think they would win every game all the time. Isn't it funny how fan loyalty can screw up your sense of perspective? (Not that I know anything at all about that ... no ... not at all.) The real truth is that Dad made us this way. I don't imagine he set out to do this. In fact, I'm pretty sure that our growth in the land of football-fandom was a complete accident -- an added benefit that came from Dad satisfying his own Saturday football lust.

He had a pretty iron clad plan, though. Pay attention fathers. You, too, can make football gurus out of your daughters. Here is how my dad did it. First, you need to understand that my dad was a little bit (read: a whole lot) of a workaholic. Every Saturday while the weather was good enough to survive, there was work to be done outside. There was car washing, lawn mowing, leaf raking, bush trimming, picking up those nasty bush trimmings, edging the sidewalk, the garden, and the driveway, putting on new blacktop (yes, we did that ourselves), shoveling snow, chopping wood, picking berries ... oh, you'd think we lived on 5 acres of rural woodland instead of half an acre in suburbia.

But, even workaholic Dad had a weakness -- Ohio State football. Not even the ever pressing "yard work" could take precedence over Ohio State football. Dad was fair, though. Strict, but fair. He gave us a choice. We could stay outside and keep working, or we could come inside and watch the game with him. Those were our only choices. Just imagine for one second how fast three girls become football watchers when those are your choices. Manual labor, or watching football with Dad. Seriously, what would you do? After my oldest sister moved out, things got even sweeter. We could watch OSU AND PSU, even when they weren't playing each other. Now, if you are stuck in a room where the only things to do are watch football or die of boredom, you become a fan in self defense. After all, fall is a long, long season if third and long isn't exhilarating to you.

I'll admit I can't often see a pass interference penalty unless the wide receiver is flat on the ground and the corner is on top of him while the ball is dropping next to them, but I can groan with the best of fans, and I can see a sack coming a mile away. My abilities may be due, in part, to all the years watching Penn State (aka, Linebacker U) and the Eagles (Offense wins games, but Defense wins championships). This means that when we are on defense, the ball was definitely uncatchable, and there is no such thing as interference. It isn't that I didn't see it, it's that it didn't happen.

But, more on this later. Our good boys in Blue and White are ranked 8th in the preseason, so things could be interesting. Wait. What am I saying? PSU football is ALWAYS interesting. Trust me. I even watch the draft.

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