Touchdowns. Extra points. YAC. Quarterback Hits.

A story that may go all year round, but technically unfolds from training camp, through pre-season games. A sixteen game grind of the regular season. For those 12 teams that prove to be the fittest, a gauntlet of playoff games to find the two teams who will joust for 60 minutes for the NFL’s ultimate prize: the Lombardi trophy and the title of Super Bowl Champions.

If it’s late-August, it means that football season is around the corner. The terms that begin this post, and many others that form the lexicon of football jargon will be all any real football fan will want to hear for the next few months. In that spirit, I create this post so that fans of the game can express how they came to love it so much. Last year, I asked a few people to give me their thoughts on how they became hooked on this wonderful, incredible game. Because I think you can never go to the well on this one too many times, I did it again this for this season. Without further adieu, let’s get to it.

First on the list is @dfolkens (Twitter name), a good man, even if he does like that team from western Pennsylvania with the black and…you know the rest.

There are so many things I love about football but if I had to narrow it down it’s about family.  But it’s a two part answer.

First off, there’s the fact that Sunday afternoons always bring to mind spending time with people I care about and football. Some people probably think it’s odd to plan your week around having time to “just watch a game” but it’s so much more. It’s time spent with those that matter the most, getting excited about the game that week, cheering and having that up and down ride with your team that is three hours where I shut off from anything else. Just spending that time with family and friends is always fun and special.  Those are moments that I will always remember and the memories are timeless.

The other part of football that stands out to me is the family of team.  For anyone that has been part of a sports team (not just football), you’ll know the connection between teammates.  As fans, we don’t have that same level of connection but seeing a team truly come together and lay it on the line for each other is a very powerful concept to me.  The best teams each year have a sort of magic about them and I believe it’s driven by the commitment to each other to be the best they can be.  It’s a great reminder to me of what can happen when teams give everything to succeed.  It’s a powerful example and one that inspires me far beyond Sunday afternoons.

I know many others have their own traditions and I can’t wait to hear more about them all as the season unfolds.  Let’s get this thing kicked-off!

I was born in 1986 so I didn’t really grow up with football. I would occasionally watch a game on television and always root against the Colts and Redskins, without really knowing why. When the Ravens came to town in 1996, I immediately loved the game and the team. The Ravens, although they were awful and I didn’t know any better, football was so exciting. Then when the Ravens won the Super Bowl in the 2000 season, I really started to understand. The intensity of the game picked up among fans since that season. Football is also great for bonding. Before joining the media and having to be available every Sunday, I would sit home and watch games with my dad. We would discuss it and cheer and get excited together, along with being disappointed after a loss. Now we’re both deeply involved in fantasy football,  adding to the bonding and intensity of every Sunday. I wouldn’t change loving football for the world, but the offseason is a nice break from intense Sundays between September and, recently, mid- to late-January.

Next up, we have @stephsherman323 (Twitter name), a dear friend and another Ravens fan:

I grew up watching the Colts with my dad. I’d do anything to spend time with him as a kid (and still would). Even though hockey was my true passion, I sat through countless football games as a kid asking my dad the same questions multiple times per game. He patiently answered them over and over. It was an awesome bonding time. After the Colts left Baltimore in 1983, I lost my interest in football and focused squarely on hockey.

In 1989, I was 12. I begrudgingly watched Superbowl XXIII with my dad (I think – not a stats girl). I remember a heck of an end of game performance by the 49ers’ Joe Montana and Jerry Rice that sparked my passion again. I was just a kid and still remember screaming. I don’t remember much about that age, but I watched fervently for a number of years after that as a rabid 49ers’ fan.

When I went off to college at the University of Colorado in Boulder, I lived with a gaggle of hippies and fell out of touch with sports. Years at culinary school afterward also failed to rekindle my interest. I paid no mind to football again for a number of years.

The Ravens came to town in 1996. I didn’t care. I lived with a couple of boyfriends over the early years that were interested in football during the early years and they had no influence on me. In 2000, I got involved in a long haul relationship with another Ravens fanatic.  After a year or two of championing hockey as the ultimate sport, I gave up. We worked all the time and I was going to be damned if I gave up Sundays with him. I made an earnest effort to learn football again and this time as more than a simple viewer.  He patiently put up with my million questions (often, the same ones over and over) and drew me maps of the players and their positions on the field for nearly every game for a while. I read SI, ESPN, listened to sports radio all day, pretty much anything I could get my hands on to master the sport. I grew to love it.

I have now been a proud Ravens fanatic for a decade. I’ve made a number of friends at football games. I have friends online that I know in real life only because of our shared passion for football. I have friends that are fans of football because of me. I spend more time with my family because we get together for away games. I truly believe that football is a unifier and a boon to our society.

And as 2010’s first pre-season game proved, the friend I went with knows a whole lot more that I do and I will never finish learning. I love a challenge and good debate, so I doubt I’ll ever let go of the sport again.

And finally, with a story so good, I had to anchor the post with it, Jen Carle (a Facebook friend and fellow Washington College alum), who also is-you guessed it-a Ravens fan:

I was devastated when I watched the Mayflower truck roll out of Owings Mills with our Beloved Baltimore Colts. While I wasn’t a huge fan of football in my college years, the Colts represented magic to me. My parents were good friends with so many of the Colts’ players. They were just regular guys like anyone else who happened to play professional football.

Fast forward to the Ravens…

Our town got a team. A brand new shiny team just for us! We were so excited to have football in our town again! I loved the purpleness of it all. I didn’t watch the games on Sundays. I always felt like I should be using my weekend a little more productively. My sons were young when the Ravens went to the Superbowl. My husband, his father and the boys and I went downtown to Planet Hollywood to watch the parade. We all screamed “GOOOOOOOSE” when Tony Siragusa went by.

The Ravens had their ups and downs. Actually there were a lot of downs, and I was a “fair weather fan.” Even to my uneducated in football eyes, Brian Billick was doing a crappy job with the offense and some of the players’ huge, oversized egos made it clear they were only in it for themselves.

Fast forward again. Billick gets fired. Billick is the only person on the face of the earth who didn’t know he was being fired. That was the dumbass who was running the Ravens’? Good riddance.

Hello John Harbaugh. Okay, seriously, who cares about football for a minute. Coach Harbs was very good looking. It was going to be a lot more fun watching the games with this guy at the helm. So I watched.

In seventh grade, my son tried out for the middle school football team and got a spot on the team! WoooHooo! Alex was going to play the same position as Todd HEEEEEEEEAAP! Instead of yelling HEEEEAAP, we could yell “CAAAAARRRRRLLLE”!  I was so proud of Alex, and I couldn’t wait to tell my friends that my boy was a linebacker for the school team. Look out other schools, because my boy was going to take your guy OUT.

“Alex”, I said, “I am a little worried about you getting tackled and tackling so much. Are you guys fully padded?” “Ewww. Mom. I am so not having this discussion with you.” Clueless as usual, I forged ahead to a conversation that would not make Alex cringe. So, tell me a little about your job on the team. In his typical 10 words or less answer, Alex told me that he is the one the quarterback throws the ball to. Earbuds in.

So I went home and looked up the tight end position. For one thing, did you know that a tight end is on the offensive line and not the defensive one? Oh. You did? Everyone does? How come no one told me? So that made me realize there were probably a couple other things I didn’t know about the game.

My younger son was a huge lover of football. He liked the strategy. The rules. The loopholes to the rules. Tim was going to be my source to all things football so I could understand the ins and outs of the game. “First off, Mom. You have got to watch this.” He clicked on a football clip on the computer. Some guy was throwing the ball down the field and some other guy caught it. Wow! Good catch, I thought to myself. The guy who caught it then went tearing up the field. He was wide open, and no one even attempted to cover him. Wow! This guy must be such a great player no one wants to be near him! I thought. Tim was doubled over on his chair laughing. “Mom! You gotta see that again!” He was right. That whole play was one for the record books. Again Tim played it, and again Tim laughed. I stopped looking at the guy running back up the field and started looking at the other players and coaches. “Tim? Why are the players on the other team laughing? Why is the guy who runs with the ball’s coach so mad? Why are his teammates looking down?” “The play was over. The player who caught the ball needed to stay where he was. That throw was going to determine where the next play happened on the field. They would have scored a touch down.” I know I must have looked at him as though he had 6 heads. “Mom! The guy who caught the ball and ran back up the field with it, ruined the touchdown for his team! He blew it! The other team is laughing because THEY will now get the touchdown because this guy gave them the ball!!”

No way.

“Mom. You have to watch football with us now. You will understand the game if you watch it on TV. There are commentators who tell you everything that’s going on. I don’t know how the players can stand it though.” “What do you mean?” “Well, the players cannot be psyched when they hear the commentators go on and on about how the play was ruined. The players should just be able to work on the next play, and not worry about screwing up.” Aha! Time to educate the teacher! “Tim, the commentary is only for people who listen on TV and radio. The players can’t hear it.” “oh. Well that’s good.”

So I did. I watched TV.  I watched as Ray and Haloti got the ball from the other team over and over again. I cheered when Matt scored a field goal that seemed miles long. I was getting the game!

So I would trudge to Alex’s school or the away game schools and I would yell my heart out. I screamed! I roared! I made comments of my own! I was making a spectacle of myself. My own personal goal was to lose my voice by Thanksgiving.

I was hooked on all things football! I watched the pregame shows. I watched the game wrap up. I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning until I heard the sports report on the radio. Football was a lot of fun! It actually makes a lot of sense, too. There were still things I didn’t understand, but Tim, especially was happy to go over points until I got it.

Then I noticed something. I understood the rules better than the refs. The refs would allow a touchdown where no actual body part was over the end zone, but the ball was. They let the Steelers do that, and the Steelers beat the Ravens.

Or, what rulebook was the ref reading when  could get Joe Flacco sacked and look like he was never going to stand up again, but if someone looked in Tom Brady’s general direction, the flag was thrown for menacing behavior. Are you KIDDING me? Flacco is getting CPR and the game is still in play, but the refs have the grounds keepers dust off the filed so Tom Brady doesn’t get dirty?

Do the refs have a penalty quota to meet? Why was everytime the Ravens drank from the water bottle a penalty? Why could the Ravens not take off their helmets when they were on the side of the field? Oh. They were walking off the field so taking off the helmet is an interruption of play? Well, where in the ref book does it say a Raven must be teleported from the field if he wants to take off his helmet? Walking is not allowed. How was it that Haloti and Ray would be doing their jobs by Defending the team and be called for unnecessary roughness? Hello? How else are they going to defend the ball? Say excuse me and let the other team play through? OMG! Were they out of their minds?

Then, the Ravens made it to the playoffs! I was going to see that adorable Harbs face again. And again. And again. The last time I saw it, the Steelers and the Ravens were playing. I was in New York and found out that New Yorkers root for any team but the Ravens, so I holed up in my hotel room with my purple t-shirt, my lucky black pants, and my bagful of Purple and black m&m’s.

The game was not going well. The Ravens, imho, were messing up big time! Willis MacGahee was being a total ball hog, but he wasn’t going anywhere with it He would run a couple yards here and there, but there were people all around him that were open. “Give it Derrick!!! He’s wide open!!!” I screamed into the TV throwing m&m’s at the screen. “Ugh! McGahee! You are a disgrace to all things football!! You are not a team player! You’re losing the game for us! McGahee get off the field you moron!!!” And he did. He got hit so hard by one of the Steelers (ref didn’t call it, in case you were wondering) Willis had to be wheeled off the field on a stretcher. Steelers won it, and there was no more football to watch.

Alex was asked to play on the eighth grade team. He was asked to reprise his role as tight end, but he was also given a defensive position. I could not wait!! The summer had been too long, and there was no football to speak of until the Ravens’ Training Camp began in August. I was back in my element.

A teacher had asked me what my goals were for the new academic year for both Alex and myself. I said the usual stuff a parent says about their kid about alex, but I was so thrilled they asked me about me. So I wrote, in all seriousness, I want to be the loudest, most enthusiastic cheering parent on that football team! I want the other parents to get loud too. I want to have parent pep rallies. Their tennis and golf claps were not going to work on the football field, by golly! We were going to show our kids how awesome we knew they were. Somehow, my personal goal for myself got to Alex’s history teacher who had been the football coach for 7th grade. He started laughing and said that he definitely thought I brought spirit to the sport. I was touched.

Alex decided for scheduling purposes that he needed to be released from the football team. I was so proud of him. He was mastering the goals I had hoped he would excel on for the eighth grade. He was taking care of himself. I could have cried.

The next day, I picked up Alex from middle school, and as we drove down the road by the football fields, I could have cried. What was I going to do without football? What was I going to do without my football parents? I didn’t have a life outside of football. I gave up my goals, so Alex could excel in his. Bummer.

So I moped. And I looked up NFL stats on the computer. And I read the sports section. I listened to the sports reports on the radio. I got a plan. I would immerse myself in the Ravens! I would buy lots of tickets to the games! I would make signs and go wait outside the D Gate and wait to have the players sign it! And I DID!

I made signs, I went nuts. I tivo’d the games so I could watch them when I got home after I had watched them at the stadium. And so it went. This year, I even picked out Pro Bowl selections, and we all went to the Pro Bowl in Miami. BEST TRIP EVER!!!

And so it goes. I have my Boldin 81 jersey. I am so excited about Donte Stallworth! Our team can make it to the Superbowl this year. I have season tickets, and I have rearranged my entire life so I don’t miss a home game. Bring it on Ravens!!!

GO RAVENS!!!!

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