Fatherhood, Football, and Cheering for the Good Guys
What it means to cheer for your team, and how it translates from father to son
I came into being in Marin County, California. I came into football fandom watching the Oakland Raiders with my dad. It was a major way I could connect with him. When the Raiders won the Super Bowl as the first Wild Card team to make it the whole way, I was in. I felt like the good guys had won. I felt like I had won.
I bought a poster with all the NFL team’s helmets lined up in rows. Some kids count sheep. I would memorize the football divisions in the AFC and NFC. I read and re-read Strange but True Football stories, learned about the guy with half a foot who kicked a 63-yard field goal. I bought those mini football helmets from the gumball machines for a quarter a piece — a week’s allowance.
Against all odds, the next season proved even more satisfying. It began in the Candlestick Park bleachers for a 49ers preseason game led by a young Joe Montana. If I thought Jim Plunkett was cool (and inspiring with his blind parents), Montana was cooler. Something about the way his hair curled up under his helmet. Joe Montana’s hair said “free spirit.”
The standout moment for me happens to be known now as The Catch. We were gathered around the Sears Roebuck 22-inch with my mom and dad and three-year-old brother. The Cowboys were “America’s Team.” Always good, it seemed inevitable they would win, and I had already begun hating them for it. The Cowboys were up 27–21 with time dwindling. Then, Dwight Clark came down with the improbable catch.
We stood. We screamed. We went on to win Super Bowl XVI.
Football is a complicated sport, full of stops and starts. Eleven men end up in a pile of dust. It can get dull. I guess that’s why it’s a “quarterback driven league” now. It’s also brutal, and the changes they’re trying to put in place right now to make it less so are great in spirit but not in practice.
Football is also often loud and obnoxious, subject to constant review, and over-commercialized. They can spend 5–10 minutes barraging you with more truck and phone commercials while musing on whether a toe touched the last white wisp of out-of-bounds fescue. If it weren’t…
