Before I met Jamie this is largely how I felt about football season;
NOOOOOO!!!
What on earth was so interesting about it anyway? It looked to me like just a bunch of guys running into each other and oh, wait something happened after playing for only two seconds…better line up and run into each other again. Blah. And what on earth do they need playbooks for? From my point of view football consisted of ONE play and one play only – run into each other, stop, repeat. It’s a play I refer to as the neanderthal. My understanding of the game was so limited that in marching band I would stand up and play only when everyone else did (which coming from my high school didn’t happen very often) since I couldn’t tell a first down from an onside kick. In fact until Jamie and I were dating, I had never seen the second half of a football game because in marching band we only had to stay until half time – and I was only in marching band because it was a requirement to be in wind ensemble the remainder of the school year.
Jamie on the other hand, grew up in a family that loves football. He watched his brother play, he played all through school, he and Chad would play pick up games with their buddies during the summer. The Jacklitch’s are all avid Michigan fans and follow the program from their recruiting prospects, through the season and into the finals and can analyze decades worth of college football. I may as well have been listening to someone talk about quantum physics, I simply didn’t understand.
But as time has passed I’m beginning to catch on, and almost dare I say, find myself interested when Saturday rolls around. I’ll even watch a game when Jamie’s at work…three hundred channels and I’ll choose to watch college football! I guess it’s similar to couples who’ve been together for decades and start to look like one another, maybe it’s the same process on an internal level.
It was helpful when I worked in an office with only men and made our weekly lunch at BW3′s that much easier for me – it was as if Jamie had given me a crash course in a foreign language by teaching me essential phrases like:
‘Where is the bathroom?’
‘Is Rich Rod trying to sabotage Michigan’s program!?!’
‘How much does this cost?’
‘Is Gideon the corner who dropped the pick or the one who couldn’t tackle Crabtree?’
I still couldn’t tell you the difference between an offensive pass interference and a screen pass but one thing I do know is there will be a lot more football in my future…
my little linebacker
fingers crossed for a scholarship someday
a band hat might fit better ;)
big shoes to fill
not all lessons are spoken
