The Purple Curse

On one clear Saturday in late September of last year, Dan and I both woke up on the right side of the bed and sat up as happy as could be. Not ones to waste such a glorious opportunity, we decided that we would go forth that afternoon and do Normal People Things. We were going to attend a Lehigh University football game and possibly buy overpriced mediocre hot dogs and nachos, because that's the kind of stuff Normal People do. We grabbed our matching Lehigh sweatshirts, dropped a few bucks on stadium seating pads, and drove off to the game.

Three things of note happened during that game.

First of all, Lehigh won! Yay!

Secondly, I spent a good portion of the game refusing to move from my seat and hiding behind Dan. Seeing old students in public is usually a good thing, unless your old students are still currently incarcerated, albeit attending football games with detention staff in preparation for their imminent release, and talking to them could possibly break confidentiality laws.

Finally, I found out that I actually enjoy football. And by enjoy I mean I get fairly fanatical about football.

Growing up, we didn't have cable television, and we lived in the boonies, so we couldn't even pick up on the neighbor's cable. My mom didn't give a hoot about sports. My dad followed sports when he could... on the radio. (You think baseball is the most boring sport of all time to watch on TV? Try listening to radio broadcasts of baseball games.) Football wasn't shiny enough to attract my attention away from my Holocaust memoirs, and the only rabid football fan that I hung out with on a semi-regular basis was my Pap-pap, who is the world's biggest Steelers fan. From time to time I would ask people to explain the rules of football so I could know what was going on, but that usually degenerated into blitzdefenserunballkickballfirstdownquarterbackfieldgoal, and I still had no clue. So up until last September, I didn't give a flying hoot about football.

At the Lehigh game, we were lucky enough to run into our friend Doug, who was kind enough to (yet again) explain football to Yours Truly. Doug never played football, he just played in the band at the football games, so he was much more able to remove himself from quarterback talk and just fill me in on what the heck was going on. In the middle of his explanation, I had a true revelation. I realized that football was actually not all about large men running into each other, but it was actually one gigantic strategy game that also happened to feature large men running into each other. Football gained another convert that day.

I went home absolutely hopped up on football. I started watching all the NFL reruns I could stomach in a twenty-four hour period (which turned out to be about two hours per day for about two weeks - no small feat for my attention span). I'm not totally stupid, so I realized that I probably wanted to direct my football love into fanatical devotion to a Pennsylvania football team, preferably the Eagles, perhaps the Steelers if the Eagles couldn't quite make the cut. So I watched a couple of Eagles games. I was not taken by the Eagles. In fact, I felt absolutely nothing for the Eagles. Darn. I turned to the Steelers. Meh. At least they seemed to be more competent than the Eagles. I continued watching various teams run over each other. Meh. I needed a team, dang it!

And then, the heavens split forth and the God of Football Himself spoke to me as I was watching (yet another) Eagles game. Grace, said the God, Thou shouldst not weep for the Eagles, for I in my glory have designed it so: Do not look with longing on the regional team, but instead turn thine eyes towards the opposing team, and give them thy love.

Thus, so it was that I fell irrationally and deeply in love with the Baltimore Ravens, for no particular reason that I could immediately identify.

At this point, I had a good enough understanding of football and football fandom to realize that I had basically chosen a life of exile for myself. In fact, I was kind of mystified at my own stupidity. It wasn't enough that I couldn't muster up any love for the Eagles of the Steelers, no no no. I had to be doomed to not throw in my towel with any of the larger teams like the Patriots or the Packers. I mean, it would be understandable if you went around Bethlehem talking about the awesomeness of Tom Brady, but if you went around Bethlehem wearing Ravens purple? You'd get laughed out of Bethlehem, if not forcefully removed from the state of Pennsylvania.

There was only one positive thing about my Ravens fascination - they did win the Superbowl a few months after I fell in love, so for a while I could get away with wearing a Ravens jersey in public and not getting killed. I've had to be careful with my public displays of devotion recently, however. Unspoken positive of going to the beach a few weeks ago: Grace can wear her Ravens t-shirt and not be refused access to the beach, since nobody knows I'm a Baltimore fan living in Pennsylvania.

At least, as we finally finally finally enter the football preseason (you wouldn't believe how proud I am that I know what the heck the football preseason actually is), I have a better understanding of where my Ravens love is coming from. It's something like this:

The Eagles

The Ravens

I rest my case.