I write a lot here about personal development, fatherhood, martial arts, fatherhood, Wim Hof, and sometimes fatherhood. But I am going to deviate a bit here and talk a bit about love. Love and football.

I have a good friend, who since we were children has attempted valiantly and in vain to get me interested in football. I’m pretty sure that as far back as 1st grade he was trying to explain to me what a screen pass was, and I was perfecting my ‘uh-huh, don’t really care’ expression I would perfect and copyright as a teenager.

He tried for a few very solid decades to get me to care in any way about football. It didn’t work. Watching on tv was a waste of time, although if I was watching I liked to watch the Seahawks (or the Seachickens, as they were fondly called around my house during less than stellar seasons). Aside from playing padless tackle games on weekends in middle school I had no real interest. When we played our games on fall weekends I had to have it explained to me why you could ram full speed into someone but you couldn’t trip them. I thought tripping was an excellent way to not get broken by the guys that were all bigger than me, and actually knew how the game worked.

I never called it “sports ball,” but I was close. It was that bad.

Over the years I received several invitations to go to a Seattle Seahawks game…for free…and I was always busy with, you know, something else. Usually rehearsals for a show, or boxing practice, or having something terribly important that I had to go do right away so I can’t explain, sorry but thanks for the invite!

And then… As with many “then”s in life it starts with: I met a girl. This woman was beautiful, she was smart, and she was athletic, competing in all sorts of team sports growing up (unlike myself, who always preferred solo sports. Diving and gymnastics, anyone?) She was born on a ranch in Montana, so she was also tougher in many ways than most of the men or women that I had met in my life. In a completely wonderful, sexy, kick ass way of course, right sweetie?

Having no local team to root for people there choose whatever team they like, for whatever reason, to become fans of. Her dad was a big Cowboys fan (the Roger Staubuck and Tony Dorsett/Troy Aikman eras), so she and one brother followed suit. Her other brother likes Denver because they were close geographically and he likes to be contrary. Her Cowboy-cheering brother still follows them regardless of all the Seahawks gear we send his kids. He says it is because one of his coworkers is a Hawks fan and is a bit of a jerk, but I think he is just saying that to be nice.

I like to think that she found it somewhat charming that I was clueless about the game. The “I don’t follow sports, really, I am an artist” thing had worked really well in college. In all reality she was most likely thinking something more along the lines of “oh crap, what have I gotten myself into?” She encouraged me to go to my first game with my friend. Came with us to games, explained some of the finer points of the rules, and even helped me say the right things. For real. In fact at our first game together I remember saying something along the lines of “we need an interception and then we need to run it back for a touchdown.” I shouted it, but in that stadium I might as well have been whispering it in her ear since only she could really hear me. She said “good, but it is called a pick six. Say pick six.” I turned the other way and shouted to my friend “we could use a pick six right about now!” Boom! I had arrived.

She even drove all around San Diego with my friend, myself, and an SUV full of guys she had never met so we could go to bars, watch the game, then go back to more bars to console ourselves after we lost. What a woman.

There is a lot I have grown to love about the game. The athleticism is still stunning to me at times. The sheer spectacle of a last minute play that not only wins the game but sends your team to the playoffs. Sharing that moment with a few thousand people who are now, for the moment, family. Because when you turn to the stranger next to you and see the same stunned disbelief on their face that you feel, you are strangers no longer. The raw, thumping vibration in your bones as thousands of people howl at the top of their lungs. Even the tribal ‘our guys vs. their guys’ aspect of it is a kick in the ass and keeps me coming back and tuning in.

There are also things I intensely dislike. Watching a player get hurt, sustaining season or career ending injuries in a split second is difficult to justify, even though “they know the risks, they choose this life.” In my years as an EMT it *never* made a gnarly wreck more bearable to think “well, the statistics of driving are there for anyone to read. They knew what they were getting in to.” I mean I enjoy, no I LOVE watching Tom Brady pout after a 3-and-out (or joy of joys, at the end of a loss!), but I think I might still cringe watching him get hurt. Most likely. But it is the Patriots, so all bets are off.

For the record, I also dislike getting pelted with skittles. I am kind of glad that era is over.

So now I call myself a fan. Of football in general, but of the Seahawks for sure. They were the team I grew up with (I knew who Jim Zorn and Steve Largent were as a kid, I wasn’t *that* hopeless!). The Hawks were the team my friends talked about (stats I still don’t always understand). They have provided some of the most thrilling and cringe worthy football I have seen.

My friend is only slightly resentful of my girlfriend, now my wife. He is just happy to have my companionship at games, to share something he loves with a close friend. We have travelled to an away game, and as long as I buy the nachos he keeps offering to take me to games from time to time. Good deal if I ever saw one. And I can honestly callmyself a fan of football. Even if it took a girl, and 40 years, to get me there.