As I watched the Longhorns defeat the Sooners, I remembered growing up with the Cowboys and Longhorns a big part of my life.

I loved football as a little boy. My father really didn’t: he’d complain after my mother put the second or third game of the day on the television. My mother, on the otherhand, was a wacko football fan.

Football and Church

We would sneak out of church as fast as we could if the preacher talked too long on Sunday morning. My mom had to get home, get a chicken fried, get lunch on the table, and clean up before the Cowboys game started. My dad and I had a contest to see who could get out of church the fastest without having to stop too many times to shake someone’s hand. (He didn’t tell me until I was in college he did that because he didn’t think all the men washed their hands in the bathroom. I can tell you when he told me that it dramatically increased my germaphobia).

Those Sunday night church services that started at 6 pm created a football problem, too. My parents thought we had to go to church whenever they unlocked the doors, so not going was not a choice — even if the Cowboys game started at 3 pm. We’d listen to the end of the game on the radio on the way, and if it wasn’t over, my mom and I stayed in the car listening until the game was over. When I asked her about that she said, “We’re at church, so it’s okay.” That was good enough for me.

Superbowl III

Do you remember when the Jets beat the Colts in the Super Bowl? I do. I still remember the fourth quarter like it was yesterday. My mother stood in front of our new giant cabinet color television. (We’d just bought it and I was very proud of it. I assume now that my mother made my dad get it for the game. Money was always tight but if she wanted it, she got it.) She walked around yelling at Earl Morall: she believed he’d been bought off to play so badly. I’d never seen my mother that mad before at anything other than my dad, and it left quite an impression on me.

Football and Judo

The fourth grade in my old neighborhood was when boys began playing football. I didn’t. My parents made me wait another year because I was too small, and I let them have it for that.

I was so disappointed that they didn’t let me play football that my parents put me in judo with a local sensei: Tim Joe — the best thing they could have ever done. My sensei taught me things I’ve carried throughout my entire life. I still use his teachings in everyday life: for example, never dishonor a master in his own school.

As I was dating, and had to go into the house to meet her parents, I never sat in the father’s chair — even if he offered it. When I negotiate today, I search for a way to get what I want and still enable my opponent to declare victory — or at least save face.

I played football the next year, and for several years after that, until I cracked a rib in the seventh grade. I guess maybe my folks were right after all.