“There’s always room for family.” The greatest mind of our generation Dominic Toretto.
Sometimes I wonder why I come back to college football year after year. Season after season. No mater the highs, a Purdue Rose Bowl appearance, a Big Ten Title Game appearance, or the lows (waives arms around to indicate the recent past), when it hits the end of August or beginning of September I can’t help but be locked in on Purdue football. It’s just always how I’ve been. When Drew tasked us to answer the question
of why we are Purdue football fans or maybe even college football fans, my answer always kept coming back to family.
My father is a Purdue graduate, all three of my older brothers are Purdue graduates. All three of their wives are Purdue graduates. I’m a Purdue graduate. My wife is a Purdue graduate and as of last year she works for Purdue. Being a Purdue fan is in the blood I guess. But, why football? Why not just stick with basketball? Well, I guess it’s because football, like life, is fleeting. It’s just 12 games a season for a few hours each game. We look forward to it. We cherish it.
I lived in Maryland for over a decade and I was away from my family for most of the year seeing them usually just on Christmas and on 4th of July. But, the one way to get me home for a non-holiday was to have a family tailgate. In fact, in 2019 we came to a Purdue football tailgate, just my wife and I, when she had just found out she was pregnant and we had to hide it from everyone. That’s a memory with family I’ll never forget. Without football I wouldn’t have that memory. Even when I was 10+ hours away from family you always knew there would be texting during a football game. It’s how we stay connected. It’s how we stay in touch.
There’s a recurring joke online that men can hang out with each other for an entire weekend and come home to their spouses with no updates on their friends lives more than the bare minimum. Oh, so and so got divorced, but we have no knowledge of why, how, or if someone was at fault. There’s certainly some truth to that. I think like most men my age, I’m somehow 39 years old, talking about feelings and emotions is hard, but being there for each other, spending time with each other, watching a game together, that’s easy. It might not be the healthiest way to connect or the way that some would like, but it keeps us close. I recently went to a Cincinnati Reds game with one of my best friends, that’s around a 3 hour drive from West Lafayette. He was planning a wedding in a few short weeks. I got home and my wife asked me questions about the wedding and honestly, it just didn’t come up. We had 6 hours in a car, and 2.5 hours at a game, but I didn’t ask what the dress code for the rehearsal dinner was. But I had a great time with my friend. The same thing is true with my brothers and my dad. Football is a way for all of us to stay close and connected. Now that I’m back in Indiana we will see each other every weekend at football games and we will get together to watch away games when possible. We won’t necessarily talk about our feelings or any huge life updates, but we’ll spend time together and that’s what it’s all about.
With Purdue football starting this weekend I can’t say for sure what Purdue’s record will be at the end of the season, it certainly won’t be 12-0, but I know I’ll have 12 game days where I’m reconnecting with my dad, with my brothers, and with a handful of friends. My son, he’s 5, isn’t big into sports just yet, and maybe he won’t be (that’s fine I keep telling myself), but he will be right there with me as we watch the away games. He’s also going to his first college football game this season thanks to our very own Travis Miller who had some spare tickets. Maybe I’ll get him initiated, maybe I won’t, but we will spend that time together and it wouldn’t have happened without football. So, why college football? Because as Han said in Tokyo Drift “You know, who you choose to be around you lets you know who you are.” I’m a sports fan, I always will be, and those folks who watch with me and chat with me during? That’s my family, and that’s what’s real.
