American football

Football is one of my joys in life. I have a lot of friends, mostly back in the States, who do not understand football and who especially do not understand the joy I get out of football. They see it as a vulgar game, incomprehensible, filled with big guys running into each other. And they're right – football, American football, can be incomprehensible, filled with big guys running into each other and stupid twenty-somethings running off their mouths. But to me, football is so much more than that.

I try to describe football to people as a chess game. Each play is like a mini chess game. The analogy doesn't really hold up that well, but bear with me. Each piece on the board – each player – can move in a certain way, and not in others. The offensive linemen can only go so far, the defensive backs can only go certain places. Each player has their role and if they overstep that role, they are penalized. The movement of the players appears chaotic and random, but looked at closely (and done well) it's very choreographed and well-organized.

Football is also about emotion for me. It's about spending every Friday and Saturday dressed in red, watching the Tanagers, the 'Yotes, or the Huskers (on TV). It's about celebrating when my brother makes a beautiful pass that's beautifully caught in the end zone. (And then about hearing his story about having to go and celebrate in the end zone by himself....) It's about the Domino's pizza arriving before Peter did on a Monday night. It's about the history of the game – recognizing the names of the announcers and the coaches because you watched them play, or because Dad tells stories about watching them play. It's about seeing former players at Homecoming games – or non-Homecoming games – and reminiscing. It's the smell of home-baked cookies on Sunday afternoon and the sight of the boys filling up our kitchen and living room eating them all before taking the remnants home to their roommates.

I miss football.