Am I Ready For Some Football?!

Ah, football season is here again. Or, as I like to call it, the season of non-deployment-alone-time-with-minions.

Despite the hard time I give my husband about his “habit”, I secretly (shhh! don’t tell him!) love how passionate he is about football and sports in general. Not only did he take the time years ago to explain football to me (I grew up in a fairly non-sport family), but he went further and explained why he loves sports so much. And it’s not what you might think.

To a non-sport enthusiast (when we were first married) I just didn’t get it. Sure he’d be umpiring this game or that, he earned some extra money, and he got to do something he enjoyed doing. I think it’s healthy, and necessary, to have some hobbies and passions that we do separately. While he has never come right out and said it, watching any and all sports-themed films over the years explained for him just why he is so passionate about sports, football in particular.

Movies like Hoosiers, Major League, The Rookie, Tin Cup, The Legend of Bagger Vance, We Are Marshall, Cinderella Man, Coach Carter, Remember the Titans, and of course Field of Dreams, all speak to the sense of community the given sport inspires. The town rallies around the underdog, the team overcomes obstacles, the athlete pushes through circumstances and triumphs. That verklempt feeling you get just as the story reveals it’s climactic moment:

My fitness journey, and subsequent passion for running, really is a more individual expression of the same concepts. Perhaps that’s why I can appreciate his love for sports and officiating now more than ever.

It’s been a long 2-year wait for him to be able to don his stripes, and I think that ear-to-ear grin says it all:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I sat on the bleachers with the minions and attempted to help them understand what and why Daddy was out there “in the stripey shirt”. What night of football is complete without the “I need a cracker,” and “I need to go potty,” and racing up and down the bleachers 379 times?

Oh. Maybe that’s just us.

Here’s to another season of football, bleacher sitting, and a husband with a permanent grin on his face!