A Confession

Alright. Here's the ugly truth. I don't like going to football games. Or at least, I generally would rather watch the football games on television. The action is easier to follow. The views are better. The weather is nicer. I can watch several games per Saturday, and it's all available just for the price of cable service.

That's not to say I don't enjoy visiting the stadiums and watching the games in person. I've enjoyed going to the LSU-Bama games at Bryant-Denny in 2005, 2003, and 2001 (all LSU wins, natch). I enjoyed seeing Jordan-Hare for the first time last year, though I wish the game had been better. I actually really liked going to Vanderbilt's stadium in 2005 as well. I would like to visit all the SEC stadiums at some point.

What I like about television, however, is that it plays into my appreciation for football. I'm not so much into the camaraderie of football, or the shared experience of football so much as I like the SCIENCE of football. I like seeing how it works with 11 guys all pushing in the same direction and working towards the same goal. While television may not have an answer for the "electricity" you feel at a live game, the stadium has no answer to the football understanding that television can give you. And in the battle between understanding and electricity, I'll choose understanding most of the time.

Plus, with television, I avoid all the hassles of going to football games. In the last ten years, going to a football game has become an all-day affair. It starts early in the morning, includes long treks from off-campus parking spot to on-campus destinations, is generally either incredibly hot or overly cold, and ends often long after dark. In between is a football game where I get to hear drunk grown men shout vile obscenities in the presence of children and display often a complete ignorance about football. Ignorance is OK as long as it's quiet, but loud ignorance is intolerable. Frankly, I'd rather spend my morning watching the Lincoln Financial game rather than hunting for a parking spot a mile from the stadium. I'd rather spend the afternoon with a nice lunch and a CBS game, and the evening listening to the ESPN announcers call their game. More often than not, one of those games will feature LSU, and I will be happy. If not, I can usually find the LSU game on internet radio or order it through ESPN Gameplan. Happy I will be.

All this is to lead up to the fact that yesterday I turned down an opportunity to go to the LSU-Mississippi State game. I was offered between 2 and 4 tickets at a reasonable price, but decided I didn't want them. I decided that I would either have to go alone or drag my wife and daughter with me, meaning I'd be on the road probably around midnight with a 6 month old baby out way past her bedtime, and then I'd have to go to work the next morning.

While I want to visit MSU's stadium at some point, I just couldn't bring myself to do it this time.