The Three Tiers of What's Important In Life

The Mountain Goats--"Moon Over Goldsboro" (mp3)
The Bottle Rockets--"Sunday Sports" (mp3)

It's that magical time of year when we must devote most, if not all, of our energy to the three tiers of what's important in life. Those would be, in order of seriousness:

1. High School football

2. College football

3. Professional football

For those of you who just come on here to steal songs, you may not realize that down here in Tennessee, the three-day weekend involves Friday night in a high school football stadium, Saturday all day in front of various tvs or radios, and Sunday afternoon in a sports bar. The 4-day weekend, aka, the Nuss Rorment weekend, would also extend to Monday night in a sports bar, or, even better, a friend's home with good home-cooked food, beer, and, yes, even more football. Tuesday classes, maybe, if we feel like it.

Granted, for those of us mired in the state borders of Tennessee, where our Democratic vote is meaningless, and, even worse, our pro team sucks, we are off to quite the disappointing start this year. Our high school team gave up 26 points in the 4th quarter last week to lose by one point, going into high school league play this week against a team that could probably beat our college team, the beloved/hated/kick you in the nuts/long-suffering/Fat Phil-coached Tennessee Vols that played so badly last night that they lost to an unranked UCLA team and are now going to be unranked most, if not all, of the season themselves as they come up against a brutal schedule of the monsters of the SEC.

Finally, as both Billy and I are "Fantasy Aficionados," pro football for us becomes a channelling of our own pathetic attempts at coaching players who perform based on a complex series of motivations of which we have no understanding. Translation: doom or dumb luck.

There, in a nutshell, you have a portrait of our lives until early February. Is it any wonder that the Indians and the Chinese are taking all of our tech jobs and Phd's in this country?

As that wise sage and babe-magnet John Mayer once said, "Fathers, be good to your daughters." John, may I paraphrase? Wives, be good to your husbands, for they know not what they do or how long they will do it for or why it matters or any of those other rational questions that might be put to them.

Put simply: It's football time in Tennessee.