My Sunday Feeling

Yesterday was one of those "red-letter" days for a sports fan like me. At pretty much the same time, depending on what channel you lighted upon, you had LSU-Florida, Penn State-Michigan, and Notre Dame-Southern Cal ( Talk about a game in which it was hard to pick someone to root for. Or root against for that matter. Worse than the LSU game even.) And over on the baseball side, you had the Astros against the Cardinals.

The football games were all hellacious contests, all of them coming down to the last few seconds. Folks that were displaced or otherwise not in front of a TV were getting in touch with me to get the latest skinny. Marge was texting me on the way home from Oxford after watching the Rebels lose to Alabama on a last second-and I mean last second-field goal. She was remarkably chipper under the circumstances which led me to conclude that she was pretty much sober.

My brother John called me from a wedding reception in Memphis. I gave him the play by play during the last minute of the Notre Dame game. He would then call out what was going on to, judging from the sound of the voices in the background, what I gathered were most of the
men at the reception. Which undoubtedly amused the womenfolk in attendance to no end seeing as how they were pretty much left to amuse themselves at that point in time.

And all the while, e-mails and IMs are flying across my screen,almost all of them asking, "Can you believe the Notre Dame game?"

This is why we watch. We watch to see if Notre Dame can pull off the upset. We watch to see how Southern Cal can somehow survive. Which they did by the way, in one of the most amazing last minute drives I have ever seen in my life. And I have a loooooonnnnng memory about such things.

We also watch because it is all we have ever known. That night, I watched Georgia dismantle poor old Vanderbilt at the home of my friend J. From all outward appearances J is a pretty quiet, buttoned-down ladylike person much in keeping with her former life as a junior-high principal back in Georgia. Get a couple of beers in her, stick her in front of a Bulldog game and well, suffice it to say, she gets in touch with her inner Jzilla pretty quick.

I remember the first Georgia game I experienced with her. It was over Labor Day and I was sick with a sinus infection. Georgia was clobbering Boise State by 30 or so, which was an insufficient shellacking for Jzilla who at one point screamed at the screen, "Beat their eyes out!"

I thought my fever was causing auditory hallucinations.

" Did you just yell 'Beat their eyes out?' " I asked.

" Well, yes." she shrugged.

I remember reaching over and divesting her of her Corona.

Last night was more of the same. This is also why we watch. Because it is fun. If you can't have fun drinking beer and eating takeout food from Leo's while a good looking crazy person exhorts her Bulldogs to beat the eyes out of the opponent, you need your pulse checked.

But if any of you hear of a bunch of powerfully built young men walking around in West Nashville with white canes and seeing eye dogs, I don't want to know about it.

Because I know who caused it and I can only assume some liability might attach at some point in time.