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Football is more than a game. Football is a feeling, a sign of fall, a connection to the past.
The excitement and electricity in the air as high school teams run through their signs for the first time, the air becomes crisp and marching bands play their familiar tunes. Crowds gather to cheer on their team. People who went their separate ways over summer are reunited around football come fall.
Whether at the stadium on Friday nights or on the back patio listening to the sounds of the game nearby floating through the air – the band and the roar of the crowd letting us know something big just happened – football season always takes me right back to childhood. No matter how old I get, I will always have this connection to my past and my family.
A Friday night at the local high school game, the first notes of the band and cheers of the cheerleaders, and I’m seven all over again in our small Texas town, idolizing those football players who were basically celebrities. Oh, how my 40-something self chuckles now, knowing that they were merely teenagers!
A Saturday morning with windows open, the fresh fall scent filling the living room and a college football game on TV, and I’m right back in my old living room with my dad.
A Sunday afternoon lazing on the couch watching the NFL (or, admittedly, intermittently napping) and I feel like my teenage self hanging out with my dad and brother. Every season, when I once again hear long-time commentators’ voices filling my home, it feels like everything is as it should be.
Some might wonder how “just a sport” can elicit such responses in me. Aren’t I being a bit dramatic? But sports have always been more than just sports in our culture. They’re one way we get through hard times. How we unwind and relax at the end of a long day. A good excuse to connect with each other and build community. So, when they are also the ties that bind one with family spread across the country, it’s no wonder the reaction is strong.
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My family had strong traditions surrounding football when I was growing up. New Year’s Day revolved around the college football bowl schedule, and the menu was not black-eyed peas for luck or greens for wealth (I didn’t even know these were a thing until I was older!) but all the typical football watch party foods – dips, chips, wings, you name it.
Not to be outdone by New Year’s, however, Super Bowl Sunday was a day I looked forward to all winter. The decorations, the anticipation, and the buffet of all buffets of yummy, albeit junky, football foods. Kids would play Super Bowl Bingo to make the game more interesting and win prizes! Even now as an adult, my family and I participate in oddball picks (what color will that game-winning Gatorade be?!) and Super Bowl squares to add a touch of fun, even if winning is completely luck.
Connected through a group text, even if we have all been separated by distance, we can still enjoy the game of the year, rag on each other and our picks, and feel the excitement of winning or losing our side games as if we were all watching together.
These football traditions helped shape our family. 
Now as a mom, I strive to continue these traditions in my children. Traditions that make me nostalgic of my past, happy with the present and excited for the future as I stay connected to my family despite moves and changes. Traditions I continue so that my children will also love the game and, through it, feel connected to us when they are also grown and gone.
Because to me, football means family.
