Another Loss Weekend

These days, I don’t seem to have much luck when it comes to my teams.

I’ve never been comfortable with bandwagon-jumping. I generally stick to my group of tried and true teams. Recently, the results have not been great.

For a while, it has been obvious to me, for example, that this year’s version of the Braves wasn’t going anywhere.  For those of us in Vol Nation, we are watching our football team get better, slowly but surely. But when building anything – homes, mailboxes or football teams – brick by brick, you must realize the work is methodical.

Ed was in town this weekend for one of our annual football weekends and, as our teams go, it was just ‘another lost weekend’ (or in this case another loss weekend). As it turned out, all of the teams I follow (and most of the ones he roots for) lost.

The capper was yesterday’s Tennessee Titans game, the home opener for the home team.

When we were kids, Ed and I were the only Dallas Cowboy fans in our circle of friends. I tore up my membership card, however, when Jerry Jones rode into town in the late 80s and ran off all my heroes. Fortunately, for me, the Titans came along in the 90s and I’ve been a big fan since then. Ed toughed it out, though, and was subsequently rewarded with three Super Bowl titles.

I do admit that when the Cowboys defeated Pittsburgh, finally, in Super Bowl XXX, I felt a little redemption for the 1970s teams who came oh-so-close…twice.

I guess he felt torn yesterday when Dallas took the field in Nashville yesterday. We even joked about the dark jersey jinx the Cowboys always seemed to suffer back in the day. It didn’t play out at LP Field, however.

I was rooting for the Titans all out and he was in a nice situation in which either outcome would leave him with at least one win in the loss weekend (he also follows his local team, the Carolina Panthers, and we noted they did win yesterday – a 24-7 victory over Detroit).

As for the Titans, well, you probably know by now they laid an egg during the home opener. They lost to navy-clad Dallas 26-10.

Even though we suffered lots of losses on the gridiron over the weekend, our time together was glorious.  It’s always great to have your best friend at your side. We:

• ate great food
• caught up on all the latest news in our lives
• told and re-told all the classic stories we’ve shared over the years
• made future plans to do it again

Our football teams may have been losers, but we celebrated wins all weekend long.

JG

Originally posted 9/15/2014