Pile it on me. I do not understand frickin' football.

[OriginalGeek]

9. Been playing and/or watching football since about 3rd grade

I grew up in Dallas so I'm a Cowboys fan since the days of Roger Staubach. I remember my 5th grade teacher coming into class and announcing bemusedly "Well we just drafted a fellow named Too-Tall Jones". My dad took me to my first pro game and we saw Roger Staubach accomplish one of his patented come from behind victories against the Eagles.

I was the Offensive Lineman of the Year for my team in the Irving Boys Football Association but, to be fair, I think they gave it to me because I played a lot of positions and was good at all of them but not the best at any of them. I didn't care, I got pizza and cake at the award party.

I played in Jr high and High school as well however my high school was a small private religious school so we only played non-contact* flag-football. They finally moved up to full contact my Senior year but we weren't very good lol.

On a side note, the defense is no longer allowed to cause an illegal motion penalty by making the offensive line move after being set... More often than not, if they move first, the defense will be called for a neutral zone infraction even if the offensive lineman moves afterward.

My wife and daughter suffer (not very silently) during football season as I will watch any game and scream at the TV for various miscarriages of football justice without regard to volume or even correctness. For the record, my TV got an unusually long harangue over that called incomplete pass that led to Denver sacking Cam and scoring. But we did watch much of the puppy bowl too so they didn't complain as much as they do during the regular season.

I was pulling for Cam and Carolina as my dad loved that team until he died. He lived in Charlotte from before they got an NFL team and embraced them whole-heartedly.

But I also didn't mind Peyton getting a Superbowl Championship even if he does own a lot of those disgusting Papa John's franchises. His commercials are often funny and Denver's Defense certainly deserved that win. And I have friends that live in Denver so I know they were happy (They have season tickets and their house has more Broncos stuff than mine has Cowboys stuff)


But yeah, just because I love football there's no rule or law that says you have to. Some of my best friends hate football.


*Supposed to be non-contact but that didn't stop me from getting knocked the eff out once. In flag football if the defender is set, the runner must make an attempt to avoid contact. In other words, they gotta run around you instead of through you. But this one time I was set, ready to grab the oncoming rushers' flag when he just decided to put his arms up and run over me - he outweighed me by at least 70 pounds. I wasn't gonna be the guy who jumped out of the way so I stood my ground and caught his forearms full in the face at top speed. The next thing I remember was hearing my coach saying "Holy crap he's alive!" as I woke up inside the school some 10 minutes later. Still worth it. That kid got ejected and suspended. We won the game. Not because of me or anything but it's nice to hang that on top of them cheating. They couldn't even beat us by cheating us.