Nows and Forevers

True confession time: I’ve only ever seen one football game my entire life.

It’s true. (I don’t count high school football, where my kids were in the band.) The only football game I ever attended was a very cold and windy University of Connecticut football game in the winter of 1984, when my father took me, his girlfriend and her two kids to the old Storrs football stadium. I don’t think we even stayed the whole game. I have no idea who UConn played. All I remember is how cold it was.

Even when I went to UConn, and lived essentially right above the football stadium, I never went. (I could hear the crowd from my dorm room though if I had the window open.)

My lack of interest in football comes as a shock to many people, here and abroad. It’s a little suspect in a football-heavy city like where I work. It’s even looked askance by people I know in Europe, who naturally assume every American is that kind of football fan. I’ve certainly seen parts of a few Super Bowls, but it’s been more about the ads and the friends. And in recent years, not even that. I never grew up with football in the house. I’m more of a baseball fan.

Depending on where I’ve lived in the country, it’s been more of a problem. In New York and Connecticut, where I spent more than half my life, it was no big deal. And in northern Maine, the big passion is basketball, another sport I know nothing about.

But this lack of familiarity with football does come back to bite me every once in a while, and not just because I have to stare blankly every time someone asks me about a game. I used to cover the NFL on the media side. While you don’t have to pilot a 767 to cover airlines, it would be a disadvantage when I’d have to talk to former players turned broadcasters. And I had no frame of reference. In my job now, in one of the top football cities in the country, I sometimes have to write about the team, and I don’t have a frame of reference there, either.

Oh well.