Yes I love to hear the sound when I pump my shotgun and when I squeeze the trigger in my .357, but the greatest sound I have ever heard is when you snap up the chinstrap of a football helmet. When you "strap up" you are the bullet I would rather be the bullet than the gun. Looking through the face mask wondering who was gonna get smacked in the next play. The crunch of a helmet to helmet hit the split second of wondering if you are getting up or not. What a great feeling of pushing up off the guy you just dropped and knowing you get another shot in about 30 seconds. I love football, the real football, American football. I love it as much as Lt. Col. Kilgore loved the smell of napalm in the morning. Practices, watching game film, game day; I loved it all when I was playing. Hell I was a freshman in college before I remembered that leaves turn colors before they get brown and fall off the trees. It will be 20 years since I last strapped on a Riddell and played. Everyday I miss it, all of it. I used to tell kids I coached that they had to devote everything they had to the game give every once of energy and have no regrets. I have cycled through a few groups of kids by now and the ones I see occasionally tell me how much they miss playing just what I told them would happen.
Now I know many of you out there are football fans. You root for your college team or a college team because you are Irish (Notre Dame sucks ass). Me I will watch any college game but I really like the SEC and BIG12 and BIG10, 100+ years of games and traditions. You root for your local pro team. Yes people I root for The World Champion New York Giants. But my love of the game goes deeper than the uniform. It is very hard to express in words everything that goes on in a game. The bumps and bruises the personal battles and the trash talk waking up the next morning stiff and sore it was all just freakin awesome. There is so much more going on in a game than what you see on the television. Every game is like a woman there will be blood, sweat and tears there will be great triumphs and miserable heartbreak and you will always go back for more. Football and women affect me in mysterious ways they piss me off and still I can't live without them. I guess the point I am trying to make, while watching the first preseason game, is I hope you all out there can understand my passion for the game. This in turn has taught me to be passionate about other things in my life as you have read so far. I guess I will fall asleep tonight to the sound of buckling chip straps dancing in my head.
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