As I had mentioned before, my love of football comes from my brothers. One brother in particular, my next older brother, was my idol. I looked up to him and tried to resemble myself after him. We would spend ours tossing the football back and forth. Practicing sideline toe tappers or deep bombs until it was too dark to play in the side yard, and would move to the driveway where the front light was. One night we played so late, that an owl swooped down and tried to take our football away. That was a pretty cool moment. He had a paper route, when we lived in town. I was only 5 or 6, but when we didn’t have school, I would ride his route with him. Those were some early mornings.
The only issue with my brother is, he is a Cowboys fan. He had me fooled into cheering for dem boys for quite a few years. Those were the Tom Landry/ Danny White years. It was easy being a Cowboys fan, they had already won 3 superb owls before I was born. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders were constantly being talked about an shown on TV. Again it was easy being a Cowboys fan. Sometimes I wonder why I changed to a Vikings fan, ’98 ’09 ’17 were probably the toughest years.
Speaking of ’09; my family would camp with my brother and his extended family pretty much every weekend. We all became very close and all of them were Cowboys fans as well. One weekend, I was able to get preseason tickets to the Vikings/Cowboys game. I remember it was a Saturday night, and we were all camping out at Loon Lake campground. The Cowboys ended up beating the Vikes in that game. We drove all the way back to the campground after the game. It was around 2 AM when we arrived. Later that day when we all finally got up to greet our fellow campers, we were met with jokes about how the Cowboys won and that the Vikings sucked, all in good fun of course. So after breakfast, I went back into the camper and put on the t-shirt I had bought from a street vendor, as we were walking into the game. On the front it sad Dallas sucks, and on the back it said Romo swallows. I came marching out of the camper sporting the t-shirt. Everyone laughed, until they saw the back. My Sister in law gasped and told me I had to change it before the kids seen it. I obliged, because I knew it was inappropriate, but still funny.
Fast forward to the playoffs that year; the Vikings were having a pretty good season, if you recall. They were able to pick up this QB named Favre in the off season. Turns out he was pretty good at quarterbacking. We make the playoffs and get to face off against the mighty Cowboys. All of the “experts” kept talking about how the Viking have not faced a team as good as the Boys all year, and that the Vikings were going to get a wakeup call. On paper, the Vikings never should have played that game. They should have just saved everyone some time and stayed in Minnesota. I am sure all of you remember, the Vikings did win that game and not by a little bit. It was an absolute butt kicking. When the game was done, I went on the Facebook and posted; It sure was nice for the Cowboys fans to win that pre-season game against the Vikes, but I guess we found out who the better team was when it really counted. None of our camping family talked to me for 3 months.
However, we all know what ensued the following week when the refs beat us to go to the superb owl. Stupid Sean Peyton and the cheating Taints.
I also had an owl swoop at a football I was throwing around when I was a kid.
Owls must like footballs!