Just when I said there would be no excuses, I came up with a doozie. I was walking the dog Tuesday morning, and we hit a patch of black ice on the sidewalk (it was about 40 degrees outside at the time but the ice was in a shady spot), and I took a nasty fall. I still feel like I’ve been hit by a truck, but I figured it was as good a time as any to write about my love of football since this is probably how football players feel most of the time. Of course, it hasn’t helped that my right wrist is still pretty banged up and my brain is slightly jostled, but I feel the need to play through the pain.
My introduction to football came relatively late. Growing up in southern California, football really didn’t seem like part of the culture, even though I grew up in Los Angeles county when the Raiders and Rams were still in LA. I can remember my dad watching Monday night football (and games on Sunday), but it did not seem like something “we” cared about. Looking through my old yearbooks, it turns out my school even had football teams (and the boy I had a crush on played on one), but that was news to me. I started to take an interest in the game right around the time my father started working “in Dallas.” We still lived in California, but I grew curious about the things I associated with Texas: cowboys, football, and Dallas Cowboys football.
The first Super Bowl I remember watching and following was Super Bowl XXVII. The Cowboys were not my favorite team (I still had some slight resentment towards the Lone Star state), but I was fascinated to watch them have their way with the Bills. I was too young and new to the game to realize that just a few years earlier, the Cowboys had been absolutely atrocious. As far as I knew, they were the best team in the country and that was just the way it was. By the start of the next season, we were living in the “mid-cities” between Dallas and Fort Worth. Although the Cowboys did not get off to the greatest start that year, they started looking like the Best Team in the Country again, and I began to follow them in earnest. They were exciting to watch, and were a constant topic of conversation at school. When one of our teachers, Mrs. Smith, was expecting a baby that January, negotiations began to get her to name her son Emmitt.
Speaking of Emmitt, I think the moment that sealed the deal for me was the January 1994 Giants game. I was supposed to be finishing a social studies report on Spain but kept sneaking into the living room to watch the game with Dad. Smith was playing with a separated shoulder and still had over 200 yards rushing. The game went overtime and gave the Cowboys the division title (over the Giants). And, of course, the Cowboys went on to beat the Bills in the Super Bowl again that year.
Although the “Three-Peat” effort was derailed when the Cowboys lost their rematch against the 49’ers in the Conference Championship, the 1994 season was still an exciting time to be a football fan in north Texas. And the “Three-Out-of-Four-Peat” (no, I am not making that up. I couldn’t if I tried) victory in Super Bowl XXX kept things going. Of course, by the 1997 season, the Cowboys had lost much of their luster, with some horrible 5-11 seasons as well as a handful of potentially promising seasons that ended with quick exits in the playoffs. I’d already gotten sucked in, though, and was ready for whatever came my way Sunday, whether or not the Cowboys were imploding.
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