Are you ready for some football?

 

          It’s nice to know that some things, including me, don’t change.

          Oh, sure, we try to look and act differently sometimes. We try to present a kinder, gentler side. But some of us have a hard time being anything different from what we’ve always been.

          Is my friend Bucky Weber reading this? Yes, I’m a dinosaur. But the dinosaurs had a pretty long run at the top before their world fell apart. Maybe I’ll be around for a while as well.

          Straight up, I’m a football junkie. High school, college, pro, I love it all. Minor league ball? Terrific, let’s go see a game.

          I even like watching practice. Ben McEnroe, the head coach at California Lutheran University, was good enough to allow me to watch his team practice during the years when I called the Kingsmen games on live streaming internet. And I enjoyed every minute.

          Yes, Allen Iverson, I’m talking about practice.

          When I was a sportswriter, my buddy Mike Swearingen was good enough to give me permission to watch his team practice. Many other coaches did the same. I even covered the Raiders practices for four years when they held their pre-season camp in Oxnard, California.

          So when we learned that my wife’s high school reunion festivities this weekend included attending the school’s football game on Friday, I was pleased. We’d sit and watch the team play, I thought. Sit right there in the grandstands and watch.

Life would be easy. There would be no note-taking while running up and down the sideline like I had to do during my newspaper days. No ranting and raving, which I did as a sportscaster. Just quietly sit in the grandstands with my wife’s classmates, nice folks all, and watch the game.

Yeah, right.

We’d been inside the stadium nearly 10 minutes before I cracked and felt the pull of the gridiron. Giving a quick nod to my wife, I strolled over to the fence which separates the crowd from the field and watched warm-ups. Then I started talking to the other railbirds.

The term 'railbirds' actually comes from horseracing, where bettors stand by the fence and watch horses practice. Or whatever they watch. I never cared much for a race with just one horsepower, myself.

Football has railbirds, too, and they have plenty of information to offer. The trick is sorting out the inaccurate stuff. After a few choice encounters along the fence line, I returned to my wife and her classmates just in time to stroll in the grandstands to watch the start of the game. I was able to give my beloved the benefit of my new knowledge.

The home team, I told my treasured wife, was 4-2 while the visitors were 5-1. But the visitors had a much larger roster (I could count the kids myself) and had three players attracting attention from Division I college programs (railbird #2). The home team’s quarterback seemed to have a live arm in warm-ups (my eyes), but he is a work in progress (railbird #2). The visitors did not seem to have a kicking game (my eyes) and that was because they lacked a kicker (railbird #1). The best-looking athlete I saw on the home team (my eyes) was still learning the game after playing some instrument in the band a year ago (total railbird agreement).

As we sat in the grandstand, the rain began. The temperature was in the high 40s, so the blowing rain steadily drained the joy offered from the chance to watch a game in person. You might say the weather dampened our exuberance.  

I talked, mostly to myself, about what I saw on the field and I cheered for the home team out loud, but to no avail. We left at halftime, with the home team trailing 25-0. They eventually lost 38-0.

I’m a football junkie and an old play-by-play man. Why change now?.

 

Thanks for reading.