There's something I should tell you.

I can't stand football.

This is a harder thing to admit than you might imagine. Football and the south are intertwined in a death grip that's sweeter than a lover's embrace. You saw Blindside, right? Where did that story take place? Yes, the south. These are my associations with football:

Grade school. The small private school I attended cut the music teacher to make more room in the budget for the football program.

High school. The most frightening bully I ever encountered was a football player. He rode my bus, and I lived in the country, so it was a long ride home. He entertained the bus with loud displays of simulated sex acts in the back of the vehicle. The rest of us would sit in awkward silence, thinking of raindrops on roses, while he wailed and screamed, writhing on top of some girl he had bent over a bench, pretending to rape her. He was an enormous, testosterone driven brute and he was never significantly reprimanded. He played ball at Clemson. He played pro ball for 3 NFL teams. He was a linebacker who shut down opposing tight ends and incurred personal fouls. He won a super bowl ring in '96. He has a wikipedia entry. He also crashed his Mercedes, rolling it several times, driving at top speeds in Missouri in 2002. I have often wondered if football hadn't been there to make him into a celebrity if someone would have taught him some self-restraint.

College. The freshmen in our dorm going out for football pushed girl's faces down in the snow, and one stole a girl's pet rabbit and skinned it with the blade from an ice skate. I think football players eventually got moved out of the general population to a sports dorm, just for them.

Football. I'll pass.

--Laura