Down Home: Football will break you-know-what

Molly made me smile with joy and laugh out loud the morning after the green-and-gold Bears from her alma mater, Baylor University, upset the 14th-ranked TCU Horned Frogs, 50-48, to start the 2011 college football season.

Here's our phone-text conversation …

Me: "Sic 'em!"

Molly: "I know! For real!"

Me: "Whodathunkit?!" (Note: A friend says anyone should be allowed only three exclamation points in a lifetime. This does not apply to texts.)

Molly: "We watched most of it online last night. So intense. And, no, I honestly did not thunk it."

Me: "Why they play the game!"

Molly: "For once, Baylor football did not break my heart."

For practically her whole life, Molly has been aware of three certainties.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin enumerated the first two—death and taxes. The third is all mine—football will break your heart.

Just think about it: At every level of the sport, the football season ends in agony for all but one team. This fall and winter, the state of Texas will crown only one six-man football champion, and the National Football League will recognize only one Super Bowl winner. Even second-place teams suffer.

Still, I just love football season. The drama. The athleticism. The uninhibited euphoria of rooting for your tribe.

Maybe I've always loved football because I grew up in a peace-loving home. For as long as I can remember, my mama forbade me from using the word "hate." I couldn't even say, "I hate boiled cabbage." Forever and always, "strongly dislike" substituted for "hate."

So, even though I never could say, "I hate the Dumas Demons," I could scream like a banshee when my beloved Perryton Rangers squared off against them on the gridiron. Somehow, unadulterated love for the home team interrupted the temptation to hate the "others."

College football presents a challenge, because five Texas Baptist universities sponsor teams, and I want all of them to sort of do well. Actually, I'm partial to two: Hardin-Simmons is my alma mater, and our older daughter, Lindsay, and her husband, Aaron, went there, as does our niece Shelby. I've always loved the Cowboys. I want them to win the Division III National Championship every year. And then there's Baylor, our sole representative in Division I and home school of Molly and her husband, David. I want the Bears to win the National Championship at least once before I die, and if we have faith the size of a mesquite seed, it will happen.

Oh, and after HSU beats East Texas Baptist, Howard Payne and Mary Hardin-Baylor, I hope they play each other to ties and win the rest of their games.