Are you ready for some football?

I love fall because fall means three of my favorite things: foliage, apples and football.  I will describe my love affair for foliage and apples another post, but today we are talking football.

Growing up my dad watched the NY Giants and therefore I was a NY Giants fan by default.  I remember sitting in the living room to watch the game on Sunday...my dad shouting at the tv until about the second half, when he took a nap but swore he wasn't actually sleeping.  If my memory serves me correctly, the Giants did pretty well in the mid-80s to the early 90s so it was easy to be a fan. 

When I moved out to California I was a new teacher, so my weekends were rarely relaxing.  I usually spent them working my second job or prepping for the week ahead.   So when I had the time...I continued to watch football, but since the Giants weren't on TV very often, I would just turn on the tv and watch whatever team was playing.  To be honest, I usually also took the same time to read the Sunday paper, so the football game was really just background noise.

I met my husband in 2002 and he introduced me to the Kansas City Chiefs.  He lived in Kansas for high school and college and was a huge fan.  At that point, it had been several years since I had really watched the Giants fan so I was easily swayed over to the Chiefs (well that and I was trying to win his heart so I was trying to impress him- why do we girls do that??).   I loved that I had a team to cheer for again and I began to make time to watch every weekend.

If you know anything about football, you know that the Chiefs have not had a great team in many years.  It has been very tough to be a loyal fan when the team you are cheering for is plummeting to the bottom.  In fact, I think I only watched one Chiefs game last year (lots of highlights thanks to the Red Zone channel on Comcast though).   But this year? Well hubby decided that we needed to switch back to Directv so we could get all the Chiefs games with the Sunday Ticket.  When I asked him if it was because we were supposed to have a good team this year, he laughed.  I probed further and he told me he was hoping for an 8-8 season (at least I am going in with a realistic expectation).  

Last week my husband posted this as his Facebook status: "NFL Opening Day: Where every fan thinks their team might have a chance. At least I get to enjoy this feeling until about 8:30 PDT on Monday."  

So when we settled in to watch last night's game against San Diego, I wasn't planning on holding my breath for a win.  I mean, sure I hoped they played well and won, but I had gotten my hopes up too many times.  Instead, I was just looking forward to getting to know our team again and watching a great competition. (Side note: The one thing that my husband has brought into my life that I get mad at him for every time it happens- sports heart break.  I was doing fine before when I didn't really care about a team and that team lost. But now? My team loses and I am devastated.  It is true more with basketball, but only because I am used to the Chiefs losing- see above.).

I still can't believe that we won!  What a great way to start the season!  What a great way to start fall season in general.  So this season, if the Chiefs are playing, you know where I will be...

Go CHIEFS!!

The whole family in their Chiefs gear!

 

Watching the game with Dad.

TTFN,

Mommy C