I feel about football the same way I feel about drinking and chocolate: I don't care for any of those things, but wish I did, because people who do like those things seem to enjoy them so much.
Especially football. I can't think of anything I do that gives me the up-down roller-coaster rush that football fans get from watching their team in action.
But then I never did like roller coasters, even when I was young. And I've never had a team. I don't know how it feels to have a team. I don't know how it feels to care.
Which is strange, considering that I've lived most of my adult life in Columbus, Ohio, a city that eats, sleeps, breathes, sweats and weeps Ohio State football, where we residents refer to ourselves as "Buckeyes" in support of the team, and where life as we know it stops on Saturday afternoons when the Ohio State Buckeyes are playing.
"Go Bucks!" is a common and acceptable form of greeting in Columbus during football season. I say "Go Bucks!" myself.
But I say it just to be sociable, and the words come from my mouth, not, alas, from my heart. While the rest of the city writhes in Buckeye Fever I remain strangely cool.
But we don't revel only in Buckeye Fever in Columbus.
Columbus is a fairly cosmopolitan place - it seems like almost everyone you meet is from somewhere else; people move here then their children grow up and move away to be replaced by more people from somewhere else. Maybe this is why we're such a polite city. (see blog post from 9/11/14 and 9/12/14).
And since we don't have an NFL team of our own here in Columbus, everyone carries with them loyalty to their home-town team or the home-town team of their parents, and the loyalties are fierce. The rivalry is especially intense among Cleveland Browns, Cincinnati Bengals, and Pittsburg Steelers fans.
And so while on Saturday afternoons in Columbus everyone roots for the Ohio State Buckeyes, on Sunday afternoons fans segregate according to their team, and gather in the living rooms or in the bars where their fellow fans congregate to represent.
Especially football. I can't think of anything I do that gives me the up-down roller-coaster rush that football fans get from watching their team in action.
But then I never did like roller coasters, even when I was young. And I've never had a team. I don't know how it feels to have a team. I don't know how it feels to care.
Which is strange, considering that I've lived most of my adult life in Columbus, Ohio, a city that eats, sleeps, breathes, sweats and weeps Ohio State football, where we residents refer to ourselves as "Buckeyes" in support of the team, and where life as we know it stops on Saturday afternoons when the Ohio State Buckeyes are playing.
"Go Bucks!" is a common and acceptable form of greeting in Columbus during football season. I say "Go Bucks!" myself.
But I say it just to be sociable, and the words come from my mouth, not, alas, from my heart. While the rest of the city writhes in Buckeye Fever I remain strangely cool.
But we don't revel only in Buckeye Fever in Columbus.
Columbus is a fairly cosmopolitan place - it seems like almost everyone you meet is from somewhere else; people move here then their children grow up and move away to be replaced by more people from somewhere else. Maybe this is why we're such a polite city. (see blog post from 9/11/14 and 9/12/14).
And since we don't have an NFL team of our own here in Columbus, everyone carries with them loyalty to their home-town team or the home-town team of their parents, and the loyalties are fierce. The rivalry is especially intense among Cleveland Browns, Cincinnati Bengals, and Pittsburg Steelers fans.
And so while on Saturday afternoons in Columbus everyone roots for the Ohio State Buckeyes, on Sunday afternoons fans segregate according to their team, and gather in the living rooms or in the bars where their fellow fans congregate to represent.
My son Tommy, his friends, and my nephew Randy are serious Browns fans. I took the above photo yesterday when I swung by Tommy's friend's house at a nail-biter moment during the Browns vs. Atlanta game to drop off some subs and snacks. Though the invitation was extended to me to stay and watch the game I declined, not wanting my affective disconnect regarding football to throw a wet blanket on those electrifying moments when the others present would spring from their seats, whooping and screaming with joy or anguish, just as I recalled my brothers and even my normally taciturn father doing in our living room on those Sunday afternoons of my childhood when the Philadelphia Eagles - or Iggles, as pronounced in the patois of Philadelphians - games would be on TV.
Even back then, finding myself a spot in the dining room or the kitchen or the room across the hall from the living room that we that we called the far living room, anywhere in the house but in the living room amidst the commotion therein, I'd wonder at the thrill everyone else but me seemed to take in watching people run up and down a field carrying a ball.
Still, I was always glad when the Eagles won.
Just as I'm glad nowadays when the Buckeyes win. And I'm especially glad when the Browns win, as they ended up doing yesterday, by a heartbeat.
Even back then, finding myself a spot in the dining room or the kitchen or the room across the hall from the living room that we that we called the far living room, anywhere in the house but in the living room amidst the commotion therein, I'd wonder at the thrill everyone else but me seemed to take in watching people run up and down a field carrying a ball.
Still, I was always glad when the Eagles won.
Just as I'm glad nowadays when the Buckeyes win. And I'm especially glad when the Browns win, as they ended up doing yesterday, by a heartbeat.
 | Tommy and Randy, over after the game for a celebratory bowl of minestrone with fresh-baked rolls  |
Because, though lacking - perhaps genetically? - the ability to feel any real emotion over football, still a win for the Browns or the Bucks makes people I care for happy and thus renders, at least for a while, a sense of gemultlicheit - a feeling of all being well in the world.
Which I guess is as good a feeling as any to end a weekend with.
Which I guess is as good a feeling as any to end a weekend with.
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