Football Scarves

INTRODUCTION
Fans of the Southeastern Conference college football take them very seriously. Year after year, they lead the country, dominating overall attendance record. In 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, the conference attracted more than 5.5 million fans to its home games, a national record for one conference. Football Fanatics, you bet, and they wear the badge proudly.

I have also reside at the other end of the spectrum. My parents were not sports and it just was not part of our family structure. I loosely follow our local sports teams, but if it was convenient. If the game was on and I happened to be watching TV, then a large, or if there was a radio on hand that I could tune in Never in my dreams I could have envisioned the trip which I would start with my own children.

TYPICAL PARENT
Like most parents of the baby boom era, my wife Stacy and I were determined to expose our children everything we could to sports to music to dance to theater to anyone. According to the generational trend, we wanted to give our children the things that we just did not have available to us as children. It is amazing how things have changed over several decades. What really stressed this point was one where Santa Claus was a game-Boy Willy, my eldest of three, as he sat there on the floor playing Ninja Turtles, he looked up at me and asked me if I was playing Game Boy when I was little? It's simple, innocent question tells the whole story. Game-Boy - PS2 - Xbox 360 - Wii, Devil, all I had access to Pong came on the scene when I was around eleven, my cousin had one if the only time I could play when I went to visit him. I try to explain to my children that I first had access to a computer at the university. We had to sign up for computer time that was often in the wee hours of the morning. They look at me, then a text message to their friend, as if I speak a foreign language. Even our vocabulary has changed, is an appropriate word SMS?

Growing up in the city center during the late sixty to seventy at the beginning the only organized sports at my disposal were baseball, basketball and football. Tennis and golf are mostly those belonging to a country club, hockey and football simply did not exist and opportunities for swimming, track, wrestling and volleyball are not available until high school. Children today have instant access to the world and exposure to almost anything; baseball, soccer, tennis, basketball, swimming, scouting, piano, you name it. I told my children from the beginning they could not participate in everything except football and boxing. My wife and I have decided that our children participate in something, they have chosen has been for most of them. The risk of chronic disease and even serious injuries in football is too high and boxing is just plain madness. If extreme fighting existing during that time, he was also prohibited. Everything else was good.

Who knew?
Jump ahead ten years. Alex, my middle child, came home from school one day and told me he had joined the football team, catching me off guard and momentarily speechless. He knew the rules, football was out of bounds. "Really, what is the position? I asked. I'll kick, he said, assuring me that it is the safest position on the list; kickers never get hurt. I then asked how it happened. Alex's gym class was out on the football field where he and some of his friends who were already in the team were goofing around kicking field goals. It turns out that Alex was their break through the uprights, with ease, thirty-five yards, so his friends suggested he try for the team, the coach liked this course.