Super Bowl Sunday might just be the largest holiday celebrated for celebration’s sake. Oh sure there is Christmas, New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving, but Super Bowl Sunday centers around football – a game.
The party I was at, hosted by Mark and Tammy Francis, was a gathering of adults whose children attend school together and Mark’s college roommate. What I want to first write about is what happened before the game even began.
It seems Mark’s next-door neighbor, Todd Swope, is a football guy like me. By “football guy” I mean football comes first –all other sports are a distant second place. Todd, by the way, was the starting quarterback for the St. Charles Pirates in 1982, the year they won the State Championship with a 31-3 victory over Bishop O’Hara of Kansas City. Talking to him about football was very refreshing. We did not mention X’s and 0’s, or try to stump the other with useless trivial questions. No, we discussed the soul of the game. We talked about things like guys crying, for both winning and losing. It is something I look forward to annually while working the “Show-Me Bowl” at the Edward Jones Dome – guys crying that is. The most moving part of the day, at least for me, is to see the number of players in tears after the game – both winners and losers. One year I even brought a couple of my players down to the game to work as ball boys so they could see, and hopefully feel the emotions. “Until it hurts to loose, you will never be winners,” I told them. Yes, talking to Todd was intellectually stimulating for me – at least as intellectually stimulated as I can get. Todd and his son, nine month old Marshall Swope (what are the chances he is named after Marshall Faulk?) had to leave before the game started. After Todd left, Mark then broke the news to me: “He came over here to meet you. He reads your column all the time in the FCN, and when he heard you were going to be here, he wanted to meet you and shake your hand.” It is with the same enthusiasm that Dolly Parton exclaimed, “I’m a franchise!” in the movie Steel Magnolias that I can now proudly say “I’m a celebrity!” Of course the others at the party rode me the entire game, “What’s your take on that, Mr. Celebrity?” Never have I been accused of being the sharpest tool in the shed, heck, I’m usually not even mentioned as a tool, but I can recognize jealousy when I see it.
Swope, Todd, not Marshall, made a suggestion about the Sports Section of the FCN, and he was not the first to make the suggestion. Do some extensive interviews with some of the sports’ celebrities of St. Charles City (yours truly excluded). Swope is the third person to contact me with such a request – each suggesting a different personality. Sounds like a good idea to me. Stay tuned to future editions for just such interviews.
There were far more than three readers who contacted me to let me know Cory Spinks was Leon’s son, not nephew. At first I felt like a complete journalistic failure, until my lovely wife pointed out mistakes are made all the time, admit the mistake and move on. The good news is, gauging by the number of readers who let me know my mistake, there are now at least 18 weekly readers, 19 if you count Swope, 20 if you count Marshall.
