When Boys Cry

Isn’t it just a game?

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

One game leads to another.

Last night as I watched — or thought I watched, or hoped I’d watched — Alabama beat Georgia at night in Athens, Georgia, something that rarely happens (that is, the night in Athens part), I thought back to other Alabama-Georgia games.

You’d think that after the last ten years, the SEC would consider this matchup a rivalry worth scheduling every year. That the two teams seem to meet every year anyway, usually in some form of championship game, must be what the league office was thinking when they decided that one of Alabama’s permanent opponents would be Mississippi State, and one of Georgia’s will be South Carolina. Bordering the other state, then counts only in certain directions, or semi-directions.

In any case, it wasn’t last year’s game, any of those SEC or National Championship games, or even the notorious “Blackout” of 2008 that I thought of about midnight last night. After I’d watched this year’s ending several times, rejoiced with my daughter, and answered many texts and emails from friends and students who must have thought I had personally accomplished some great feat, another game, another time, hit me.

Actually, keeping calm, refusing to have even one beer, and not feeling my blood pressure shoot past 140/70 have to count for something in a man…