Today is the UGA vs. Georgia Tech Game. Go Dawgs! Go Yellowjackets! It's a huge deal around here. I don't know who to root for, but thanks to a Georgia miracle called the Hope Scholarship, which offers free tuition to B+ students who are admitted to a state school and maintain their average, my younger son might actually attend one of these fine southern institutions. So I guess I'll root for both of them.
Football isn't on my mattering map. (Note to any J-date or Match.com guys reading this blog . . . I'll cook for you, I'll read a book while you watch the game on tv, but please never make me go to a football stadium.) For 22 years I was married to a man who literally didn't know who was playing in the Superbowl, and took pride in that.
I don't get the art or strategy of football. I'm such a pathetic northeastern liberal that I honestly get uncomfortable watching big beefy white coaches with headsets, bossing around the big beefy African American players. Basketball has artistry and finesse. Baseball is wonderful and poetic. Football just messes with my head.
I'm not a total football dweeb. I loved Braveheart. But when I watch football I don't see the formations, I don't know the plays. Here's what I see when I watch football: Huddle. Line up. Snap. Catch. Run, run, run, run, fall down. Repeat.
I can get excited seeing a lean, lithe running back (?) get the ball and snake his way down the field while his gigundo teammates block and defend. And I like having an actual person to root for. A woman I work with has a son, Patrick Jones, who plays defensive tackle for the Arkansas Razorbacks. Unfortunately Patrick is a freshman and doesn't get played much.
I grew up in a town with competing high schools, Great Neck North and Great Neck South. Their twice a season matches were a Jewish version of Civil War reinactment. There were pep rallies and parades. I didn't have much pep, and I certainly never had a boyfriend, much less a football player to root for. I think I went maybe twice in four
years. I once went to a Jets game at the Meadowlands on a freezing day in January when Joe Namath was a star. That will never happen again.
Tell me why a nice Jewish boy from the Bronx like Arthur Blank isn't
content to lavish his Home Depot bucks on his beautiful young wife, give money to hospitals and universities and run a
wonderful Foundation benefiting youth and the environment. He has to go
buy the Atlanta Falcons? Sheesh, I see the guy in synagogue sitting with his
mother on Rosh Hashana. I see his adorable little kids at sunday
school, and his accomplished wife raising money for
important causes. In Atlanta they are football royalty.
Living in the south seems to have caused some genetic mutations in my own family. My cousin Leslie has lived here for 30 years and raised her kids here. She's inviting me over today
for a post UGA/GA Tech meal. (I am instructed to bring coleslaw for brisket sandwiches. Jewish football food, I love it!) Leslie's kids, A.J. and Melanie and their spouses are serious UGA fans. A.J. is a season
ticket holder and alum who loved UGA so
much, he still lives in Athens, GA. He and his wife Heather have reserved place in the parking lot and elaborate system for
tailgating on game days. They're always inviting us to come, and maybe we will.
Tailgating, now that appeals to me. A winter picnic, a goyish
version of picnicking at Tanglewood. I could get into that.