Suspending time

On Saturday, we went Christmas shopping in the afternoon and did not get home, bearing presents and a nice hot pizza pie, until about 7.

But the all-important South Eastern Conference football championship game, pitting the Crimson Tide of the University of Alabama versus the Bulldogs of the University of Georgia, started at 4!  Oh no! What to do?

Bearing in mind the ancient Chinese proverb about the second-best time to plant a tree being today (with the best time being twenty years ago) I had planned for this collision of the shopping world and the football world by setting the DVR to record the game.

Then, it was simply a matter of avoiding the television department at the Super Try 'N' Save (because they would likely have a 64" screen showing the game) and making sure the car was playing a CD rather than the radio.  Also, when we went into Italian Sensation to get the 16" pie with sausage and mushrooms, I peeped in first to make sure there was no tv playing to wreck my plan.

So we went home and watched the game from the beginning, just as nature had intended.  It was an indoor game at the Georgia Dome, so for all that daylight mattered, it might as well have been three o'clock in the morning.

And the only other step I had to take was to make sure not to check Facebook or email, so as not to be tipped off about the outcome.  I'm glad I didn't!

It was a great game, not decided until the very second that time ran out!  And just in case you recorded it and have not sat down to watch it yet, I won't wreck it for you other than to say that the winning team had red in their uniform.

The Alabama baton corps is always smiling

There is nothing that the NFL can offer, great as their football is, that can match college football in terms of pageantry and excitement.  Maybe this is because a tiny percentage of the college players are being rewarded handsomely (now and forevermore) for their ability and skills, while the great majority of them are humping along for the four years of football without the option of going pro - but they give it all they have without the weary nonchalance of a 38-year-old pro offensive lineman.  And to see the cheerleaders, the bands, the baton corps is to see the best of young America spirit on display.  Nothing is wrong with pro football, but for me, you can't beat watching a kid who, six months ago, was being handed a high school diploma, and on Saturday night, was being handed a football and told to run like a galloping ghost.