Football

I love football season. I always have since I was a little kid. My earliest memories were way back in second grade when the Alexandria Beavers played their home football games on Friday afternoons because they didn't have ball park lights yet. If you bought a ticket for the game, you got out of school early to walk down to the ball park for the 2 p.m. kickoff. If you didn't have a ticket, well... you got to sit in class and be quiet until the school day ended. Really? What choice is that? And who wouldn't take the opportunity to get out of school early on a Friday afternoon -- with the specter of a whole free weekend ahead -- and enjoy the beautiful, warm fall weather to watch the Beavers play football? I don't recall many of Alex's football heroes back then. Jim Murray comes to mind -- a bruising running back who championed the local crew.
Then in the eighth grade I had the chance to be a student manager. It was great fun to be around the big guys, hang around in the coaches' office and smell the sweat, leather and outdoors that came with the job.
Basketball, baseball and track were my other great sports loves, and I enjoyed all of them. But I had a physical build most compatible for football. My physical attributes weren't great enough to draw the attention of college coaches, but I loved playing the game, and was among the fastest players on our team.
In my freshman and sophomore years I labored "in the trenches" -- playing in the offensive or defensive line for the junior varsity, wearing number 66. I don't recall much from those years as I saw limited varsity action (if any). But near the end of my sophomore year, the coaches (Jon Wessel and Harold Ingalls) recognized I may be a better fit in the backfield, and so I became a halfback/cornerback.
During my junior and senior years, I started at right halfback in a backfield that included Dan Wagner at quarterback, Chuck Benson at fullback and Tom Nebelsick at left halfback. At 193 pounds, I was the lightest of our three running backs. In our junior year, we won only two or three games, but as a senior we went 5-3. I scored 10 touchdowns that year, and in our final game against Marion (my final game as a senior) I scored three touchdowns -- one on an interception I ran back for a TD.
But the college coaches didn't come knocking at my door. At 5-10 and 195 I didn't have great size. I was named All-Cornbelt Conference and received one small scholarship offer from South Dakota School of Mines, but I had no interest in attending college there.
Through the years, my love for the game of football has evolved. My interest in professional football has waned, while my enthusiasm for the college game has bloomed.
Having been a long-suffering Minnesota Vikings fans, I've watched them rip the hearts out of their fans time after time... from Drew Pearson's "Hail Mary" miraculous reception in the 1975 divisional playoff game, to four stunning Super Bowl losses, to Gary Anderson's 1998 NFC championship game missed field goal and the Vikings' collapse vs. Atlanta, to Brett Favre's ill-fated interception and the Vikings' loss to the New Orleans Saints in the 2010 NFC championship game. Pro football and I aren't the best of friends. My three favorite teams -- the Vikings, Buffalo Bills and Seattle Seahawks -- are 0-9 in Super Bowls. Not good. In fact, some Vikings fans breathe a sigh of relief when the Vikes are stopped short of the Super Bowl because, well, who wants to be the first NFL team to lose five Super Bowls (without a win)?
I've always been a South Dakota State University fan, of course, having gotten first my undergrad degree there in 1977, and then my graduate degree in 2011. Ironically, however, I never attended an SDSU football game in all the years I attended there. I went home almost every weekend back then. But when I married Barb in 2007, I became a Cornhuskers fan. And wow, what an experience. For the last four years (coincidentally, beginning with the first fall that we were married) we have attended one Cornhuskers home game. It made me a complete convert to college football. There is nothing like the experience of being among a sea of 85,000 red-clad, rabid, loyal Nebraska fans, cheering the Cornhuskers on. It is like one very, very huge party.
The first year the Cornhuskers were still coached by Bill Callahan and still struggling to reach the .500 mark. Barb and I, along with her brother Jim and his wife, Rhonda, watched the Huskers edge Ball State, 42-41, in a very exciting game. The second year I flew up from El Paso, TX and we watched the Huskers -- now coached by Bo Pelini -- top Baylor. Our perfect record ended the third year when Iowa State came to Lincoln and beat the Huskers, 9-7, on a cloudy, misty, wet, miserable day when Nebraska turned the football over five times inside their own 10-yard-line.
Then last year, in a game I had looked forward to since it was announced a couple of years earlier, SDSU visited Nebraska, and for the first and only time I would ever consider entering Memorial Stadium wearing something other than red, I donned my blue and white SDSU jersey and cheered for the Jackrabbits, who held their own despite having two touchdowns called back on penalties and ultimately losing, 17-3. Still, although we were seated among a huge red-clad Nebraska crowd, they were extremely polite and hospitable, and we received several comments as we left about how well South Dakota State had played. It made me proud -- not only to be an SDSU graduate but also to be a Nebraska fan. They are some of the best -- as far as I'm concerned, THE best -- fans in college football. In fact, I took a picture of Barb standing beneath the Memorial Stadium entrance that reads, "Through these gates pass the greatest fans in college football." It is an experience that everyone should have.
Although we may not make a Nebraska game this year (the season's half over now and our schedules make getting to a game difficult), we did get down to Sioux Center, IA to see Barb's brother Bill, who is assistant head coach of the Dordt College Defenders. Dordt is in only its fourth year of organized football, and so the programming is still struggling and experiencing growing pains. But the day was a gorgeous, sunny, warm, early fall day and the crowd was enthusiastic. There is simply nothing like watching college football on a perfect fall day.