li

“Football players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining their bodies for the pleasure of strangers.”

-Merle Kessler

            I’ve never been much into football, a fact that can be traced back easily to a now-legendary seventh-grade season involving a twelve-year-old me, Rec-Spec sports goggles, and being simply terrible at every aspect of the defensive line.

            So I’ve never been much into football but I love football games. Does that make sense?

            Yes. Of course it does.

            I love the sound of the collective hopes and fears of the student body rise and fall in the September sun, as they sweat and cheer and scream profanities together, watching fellow (albeit more muscular, athletic, and god-like) classmates rip and tackle and outmaneuver the inferior representatives of other inferior universities. I love the melting Strawberry Chill which is resting in my right hand, numbing my thumb and pointer finger, causing them to swell and begin the journey towards frostbitterness. I love watching the sky darken and the bugs come out, my eyes focused, not on the game below, but the stadium lights that are still burning bright into the night. Who wouldn’t, admitted-fair-weather sports fan or otherwise?

            But this is so different than last year, when I was out there, down there, not on the field but in front of the student body, screaming and making a fool of my half-naked self. And I’m hearing stories of the new pep rally squad, following into the laughed-at footsteps of me and my peers, and how they are apparently struggling with a so-far losing season, the loss of mentors and loud, yelling upperclassmen.

            But all they need to remember, as they stand out there, intimidated by the crowd and the parents and the girls, is to just stare into the bright stadium lights above them, just like I am doing tonight, hundreds of miles away. All they need to remember is to just stare into the bright stadium lights above them, until the brightness is all that they can see, until all their pupils can make out is all the individual bulbs lining the incandescence.

            And forget about everything else around them.