I published a story October 15 about growing up with a serious football fanatic, my mother. After my son Will read it, he decided that since I wrote about my mother’s idiosyncrasies, he should write about his father’s. In fairness, I have included it below. I hope you’ll find his story as funny as we did. 

Will Little: Confessing an Addiction

I am addicted and college football is my drug. I love watching two teams walk out onto the gridiron every Saturday to face-off. I love the pageantry, tradition, and rivalries. I love watching a team that has been dominant all season walk out onto the field and meltdown because, just like every other team in college football, it’s made up of 105 idiotic teens who sometimes just can’t think right. Most of all, I love the nostalgia and the bonds football brings to my life.

First College Football Memories

My first memories of college football are of my dad watching University of Texas football: sitting in our living room and screaming at the TV. I was young, and I hadn’t fallen in love with the sport yet, but I can tell you that to this day I do not believe my father agreed with one coaching decisions that John Mackovic ever made. I remember at the beginning it was best just to avoid walking in front of the tv — or even entering the room. Then, in 1998, I remember hearing “Run Ricky!” over and over from the living room. So I walked in, sat down, and fell in love.

I wasn’t really allowed to talk in the beginning. My dad would answer my questions during commercials (or when we were playing Baylor… because Baylor sucked and we didn’t really have anything to worry about during that game). But for the most part I just followed his lead. We screamed in anger as Chris Simms started over Major Applewhite, we yelled in joy as Ricky Williams broke the rushing record, and we high fived when he took home the Heisman Trophy. It was amazing. I loved every minute of it.

First Live College Football Game

The very next year my dad told me he was taking me to the first Texas game of the season. I can still hear myself saying how much I didn’t want to go. I didn’t like it when things deviated from my convenience as a kid, and a two and half hour drive was not convenient. It might be the single greatest thing I was ever forced to do.

As soon as we got there I witnessed the magnitude of college football. It was incredible. A sea of burnt orange covered Austin. There were games, chants, food, and crazy fans. I had never seen anything like it in my young life. I have many fond memories with my father, but I hold this memory in special reverence. Beating the stuffing out of Louisiana-Lafayette was one of the single most magical moments of my life.

I can still feel my jaw drop as my father told me it was okay to chant “OU sucks” during the UT Fight Song. (As long as I didn’t tell my mom.) The following year I got to chant Cedric Benson’s name and demand he be put in. I remember driving to the games and watching skydivers drop from the sky.

Bug Consumption

Another time (I remember everything about those trips to watch Mac Brown and his Longhorns), my dad and I drove home after a night game and I fell asleep on the way home with my window open. I woke up to a funny taste in my mouth; my dad turned to me and asked if I was full. I looked at him in confusion until he was gracious enough to inform me that I had consumed at least 4 bugs in my sleep. I don’t know if I’ve seen my father that tickled since.

College Football and my Mom

As I grew older it became more and more of a tradition for me to watch the games not just with my dad, but with my mom as well. When it comes to sports my mother is extremely superstitious, and she definitely passed this trait on to me. If we were losing but then started playing well after my mom got up to grab something from the kitchen, she would stay in there until the next commercial break. She’s still a firm believer that if she likes a team too much it’ll make the team lose. She is a passionate woman, and will do what it takes for her teams to win — even if that means acting like she doesn’t cheer for them.

Growing up was hard for me. I was a very stereotypical middle child with a mixed bag of learning disabilities. Suffice it to say, I gave my parents a very hard time. But college football always put a timeout on all of that. Even when I was “double death grounded” (a term used when you get grounded during an already existing stint of grounding), I watched UT football games with my parents. It’s one of the reasons football is so important to me. It was an oasis, a time when I could stop being such a little shit and they could look past the trouble I had gotten into in any given week. We enjoyed something together. Football games became little pockets of happiness during one of the hardest times of my life.

A New Football Allegiance

When I had finally gotten my shit together and started attending college seriously, I went to the University of Houston. I had already been a fan for a few years, but I quickly became a die-hard — partially because we were doing well. Kevin Sumlin had just left, but our team wasn’t horrible and I thought it was incredible to get to experience all the traditions I had experienced as a child, but for my own school. However, I became a real die-hard mostly because of how excited I was that my mother and I shared something exclusive together, something she didn’t share with her other children. I literally teared up with pride when my mom posted a picture of us and proudly proclaimed that it was a picture of two generations of Cougars.

I love my mother fiercely. She is an inspiration to me. When I attended UH it was, in my eyes at least, one of the best times that she and I shared together. She got season tickets to the UH games and, even though we didn’t sit next to each other during the games, I always felt a warm sense of pride and closeness knowing that she and my father were there watching.

Football. Love.

I could write a million pages about how college football has been important to my parents and me, but I won’t. I will simply leave it here: college football wasn’t just a tool that my father used to teach how to be a man, nor just an avenue to bring my mother and me closer together; it has given me an infinite number of reasons to cherish it. It has taught me so much and brought me closer with the two people in my life that have literally always been there for me. And I can’t wait for this weekend, so I can call my dad and talk about which team sucked, and which team looks scary good, and end the conversation with “I love you”.