Football is Finally Here

The days are getting shorter, the weather is getting cooler, and it is sad to see that summer is starting to fade away, but the month of September is my favorite time of year. This is the time when the football teams take to the fields to play in the best sport in the world. On September 4th the Redskins and Giants will play in the NFL season opener. This is the day that I have been waiting on since the Giants won the Super Bowl back in February. I am not a fan of baseball and basketball is pretty good, but football is hands down my most favorite sport for many reasons.

Football starts during the most beautiful time of the year. The leaves on the trees are starting to change colors, the weather gets cooler and not so hot, and the kids all go back to school (my wife likes that part). I remember going to Payson High School football games and BYU football games with my Dad as a child. The air was chilly but we would bundle up and get hot cocoa and hot nachos at the concession stands. My wife and I are expecting a little boy (we currently have 2 girls) to be born in September and I plan on taking him to many football games over the years and will watch them on TV with him as well.

Football is the most team-oriented sport of the major sports. You need all 11 players on offense and all 11 on defense working together as one unit whereas basketball and baseball you can have a lot of one-man “showboats” on your teams. In football you need your blockers and your running backs and receivers working together to help protect and catch passes from the quarterback. It is fun to watch how the team interacts with one another and how they feed off each other’s successes and the support they give each other during the hard times.

If you enjoy action, suspense, big hits, and lots of unpredictability then you need to watch a football game. I have never seen anything to compare to a football game with seconds left in a game, the team moving down the field, Brett Favre as your quarterback throwing a huge bomb to a receiver in the end zone, the excitement of the win in the final seconds. I was witness to such a scene when the Green Bay packers traveled to Denver Broncos last year in October on a Monday Night Football game. My wife joined me on this monumental event in my life.

I had been waiting for 15 years to watch the Packers and Brett Favre to play in real life. It was finally my chance. The field at Denver was awesome. There were Packers fans everywhere. The game was exciting and thrilling and the Broncos scored a field goal in the final seconds to send the game into overtime. I couldn’t believe that I was in Denver on a cool October night watching my favorite team and my favorite player now going into overtime with the home team. The tension was mounting as the Packers received the ball first. Favre got under center and faked a hand off and heaved the ball about 50 yards to a streaking Greg Jennings down the left sideline. Jennings outran the defender to score an 80 yard touchdown on the first play of overtime leading the Packers to victory over the Broncos…and I was there to witness it.

Make sure to watch this year’s football…you never know what you might miss.

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