With fall officially here, it means only one thing: its
football season! The temperatures have dropped, the pool is shut down and
we’ve officially added jeans to our wardrobe for the year wear. The St. Louis Cardinals wrapped up their
season on a high note, but it wasn’t enough to make it to the playoffs…which
means it’s time to retire their team flag and move in a new direction…hello, football
season!
If you’re south of the Mason-Dixon line you know good and well
that high school football rules the roost. And of course, those games are
on the local news. I cut my teeth in
television as the annoying voice on the other end of the phone line badgering
folks for scores so she could get a complete scoreboard into graphics for
KFVS’s Heartland Football Friday. Brett
has spent countless Friday nights standing on a sideline waiting praying for someone to score so he could race to the next
game, then race to edit before pitching the hour long live show. So when football
season kicked off this year, it was a first that we could finally enjoy from
the luxury of our couch.
In case you weren’t aware…college football is an institution in
the South! Living in the heart of the SEC put us within spitting distance
of several schools known more for their athletic lineup than anything else.
Smack dab in the middle of Mississippi made us targets to pledge our
allegiance to either Mississippi State or Ole Miss. And the rivalry is a
big thing down there…on more than once occasion, Brett was accused by
viewers of ‘favoring’ one school or another by showing a few seconds more of
highlights in his WTVA sports newscast. No one ever seemed to catch on
that Brett was from North Carolina by way of Arkansas. Since moving to
upstate New York, we haven’t lost our loyalty to my Missouri State Bears and
Brett’s East Carolina Pirates (ok, not real heavy contenders…but at least the Pirates made it to the Liberty Bowl last season) Up here, y’all don’t seem real interested in college football?
Brett was such a hard worker he never even noticed those
Ole Miss Cheerleaders!
Maybe Yankees aren’t too
smitten with high school or college football, but they sure are crazy about
professional pigskin! We were shocked when we realized that the NFL has seven teams
in the New England area! There’s plenty of professional grid iron glory
going on around here! Of course, we’ll be sticking to our roots (well, Brett’s anyway) and are cheering this season for Carolina Panthers (hopefully
they’ll win a game or two). My husband’s family are season ticket holders,
plus #34, running back DeAngelo Williams, is a from our neck of the
woods. Williams hails from Wynne, Arkansas and Brett got to cover him
during his college years at Memphis.
As the Cardinals flag comes down and the Panthers
flag flies high (ok, about waist level) at the Garrett homestead, we have high
hopes for this year’s football season!
