How I Found Football and How It Set Me Free

I am a born-again football fanatic, and I don’t care who knows it. I was not always like this. My friends can hardly believe my love affair with football. They know me as a pacifist vegetarian salad-eating cat-loving pie-baking bookworm. As a mom who encouraged her children to follow their dreams and supported them in each of their extracurricular endeavors but who stubbornly forbade her sons from playing football.

“How many Jewish football players do you know? Why? Because of Jewish mothers. Football is a seriously dangerous sport,” I told my sons.

“Mom,” my youngest son whined, “ it’s not more dangerous than water polo or skateboarding. If you remember, I broke my leg playing soccer.”

I never played sports growing up. I walk a mile every morning, religiously, for my health and sanity nowadays, but walking doesn’t qualify as a team sport. I can’t throw a baseball more than twenty feet. My friend Annie beat me at the 50-yard dash in elementary school and Annie was in a wheelchair. I drive a fuel-efficient car. I hate TV. I rarely drink alcoholic beverages. The last time I entered a fast food restaurant was during the Nixon Administration. SUV, beer, and McDonald’s commercials are lost on me. I oppose violence, brutality, and aggression. I confess (forgive me Peyton and Eli), I used to go grocery shopping on Monday nights because the store was empty. That was then. This is now.

It all started so simply, so innocently. I bought tickets to a Raiders and Chiefs game at the Oakland Coliseum in 2002 as a Christmas present for our family. My children and I had never attended a live football game. My husband, Ron, and two of my three children loved the Raiders. It seemed like a fun family outing. I bought the tickets for a song in September at a silent auction to benefit some worthy cause or other and stashed them away in my underwear drawer. In December, I wrapped them in a box with a big bow and put them under the tree. In the meantime, from September until December 25th, I carried a deep dark secret.

Knowing I had those tickets, I started watching Raiders games on TV. I wanted to give my family a terrific Christmas gift. I wanted that game to be a game to remember, which would only happen if the Raiders and the Chiefs were playing at top form. The first time I sat down on the couch to watch a Raiders game, Ron’s jaw dropped to his knees. When I took a peculiar interest in the Chiefs, he was completely baffled. Before long, I was spending every Sunday and Monday glued to the TV as I grilled Ron about each play, each foul, and each referee call. I started learning the terminology and basic strategy. Ron rejoiced in the arrival of his new football wife. He loved explaining to me the ins and outs of this game so dear to his heart. If you have ever watched a movie you love with someone who hasn’t seen it before, then you know how Ron felt introducing me to the whys and wherefores of football.

An avid observer of life, I search for the lessons ripe for picking in the world around me. Every person who crosses my path, every situation I encounter, every dog, bird, tree, flower, or natural occurrence has the potential to expand my knowledge and spark my imagination. Football is a phenomenal teacher. They say “it’s a game of inches.” So is life. One never knows what hair’s breadth forward movement will tip the balance and take you to your goal. I love the drama of football, the drama of the players and their lives and the passion that brought them to the field, the commitment that keeps them there, the effort that makes them win or lose. I love the life lessons inherent in the game and the analogies that can be drawn from even the simplest football plays. I am forever hooked on football.

I knew that I had crossed over into the zone on the night when my husband and I were making love and my mind strayed to the game. In mid-stroke I whispered in my husband’s ear, “It was a fumble, not an incomplete pass. That ref should be fired.” My husband nearly bust a gut laughing. When he could finally speak, he said, “Excuse me, I gotta go call Jim [his best buddy] and tell him about this.”

Unfortunately for me, I fell in love with the Raiders during their last hurrah with Rich Gannon and Jerry Rice. I wonder if the Raiders have maintained the worst record in the NFL for the past five years because I became a rabid fan. Maybe if I stop wearing my Raiders sweatshirt they’ll go to the Playoffs. In 2002, they were still hot and my family went berserk when they opened that box under the tree. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the game we saw with those tickets was the last time the Raiders beat the Chiefs before today’s game, when they FINALLY beat them again. (I think they’re coming back. JaMarcus Russell, he’s the man.)

I feel sick when I think of all the years of football that I missed; wasted years, because I had no clue. Football will be the delight of my old age, and will make a major contribution to that longevity. Football has become one of the biggest stress relievers in my life. What therapeutic activity could do more to reverse the stress caused by my everyday worries? (Multiple choice below.)
A. Spending my Sunday curled up on the couch with my cats on a rainy winter afternoon in a glut of games, my husband gleefully TiVo-ing like mad to look at the replays and switching back and forth between channels to see all our favorite teams.
B. Jumping up and down as the ball sails down the field into the perfect cradle of Ladanian Tomlinson’s hands as he propels himself forward yard after miraculous yard into the endzone.
C. Spilling my popcorn as I rise to my feet, my heart in my throat, as Devin Hester scores a touchdown AGAIN off a punt return.
D. All of the above.

Football has set me free.