Monday Smiles – 12/6/2010

If you take a look at my recent posts, you’ll see spirituality and you’ll see gratitude.  You’ll see family and you’ll see concern for others who may be struggling financially during his holiday season.   You might think Older Eyes is above such trivialities as college football games and school rivalries.   But if you’re a long time reader, you know differently.   I live and die with my teams, my teams being the University of Connecticut Huskies and the University of Southern California Trojans.   I’ve been known to lose  sleep after a loss and Tivo games so that I can watch only if we win.   I’m a very poor loser.   When USC lost to UCLA a few years ago, I spent an hour writing the Top Ten Reasons it’s still good to be a Trojan then hours more posting it on message boards all over the web.   I even tried to get it read on the local USC radio station.

Why I get so caught up is a mystery to me.    I spent my years at Connecticut and USC in the bowels of the Electrical Engineering department, which may be as far from the Football program as you can get and still remain on campus.   Rationally, I realize that most of these young men, particularly at a powerhouse like USC, are students of only one thing, a game that involves a peculiarly shaped ball.   It has nothing to do with me.   It has less to do with the quality of the education I received at those fine institutions.   There’s probably a post down the road about why our species, especially the males of our species, invest ourselves so thoroughly in the games of soon-to-be-millionaire boys.   I’m sure it will be a very serious post with deep psychological ramifications.

This isn’t that post.   This is Nah-nah nah-nah-nah, UCLA, we are on probation with many lost scholarships, having our worst season in years and we still beat you.    It’s We lost our rah-rah coach that you were always complaining about, but we still beat your golden boy who may not be quite the coach you imagined.  It’s We may not be going to a bowl, but at least it’s not because we’re an awful football team.   This is, One more time, the football monopoly** in Los Angeles isn’t quite over yet.

Sorry, readers.   We’re going to our friends’ house for dinner Saturday night and Diane’s an even a bigger UCLA honk than I am for USC.   If I didn’t get that out of my system, I might end up hungry.   Or worse.

It’s Monday.  It’s Trojan town for one more year.  I’m smiling … Fight On.

** A premature full-page ad in the LA Times when Rick Neuheisal was hired as the UCLA coach

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Tags: curmudgeonly rants, football, humor, play, sports, USC Trojans

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