Hello Fellow Football Fiends!
(This post originally ran on September 20, 2007)
This is gonna be a different kind of post for Gridiron Goddess. It focuses on the intangible feeling alums of certain universities get when they say “Roll Tide” or “War Eagle” or, of course “Fight On.” So read on, I hope you enjoy it and WAHOO Another weekend of football is nearly upon us. Oh, and I happen to think this picture of all the USC fans doing their Fight On thing here is a beautiful, sacred thing.
Some people have a security blanket. Some people have a teddy bear.
I have a security sweatshirt.
On Saturday morning, er, almost afternoon actually, as I crawled out of bed close to noon and grabbed my white hooded USC sweatshirt, it suddenly occurred to me just how many events in my life that particular sweatshirt has been witness to.
In February 1987 my father and I went on a road trip. It was my Senior Year of high school and we were off on the obligatory father-daughter bonding college campus trip. We loaded up the banana mobile (a yellow Oldsmobile station wagon that was the bane of my existence until I embraced it for its gigantic 8 cylinder engine) and set out for Southern California.
On our agenda: University of Southern California, California State University Long Beach and the University of San Diego, where one of my best friends was a freshman.
First up was USC, being the closest. It was also not a school I intended on attending. We got lost. We got lost in such a bad neighborhood that when we got to USC, its neighborhood seemed good. Anyone who knows about SC knows this is so far from the truth that it is laughable.
I wanted to go to Long Beach and major in Art. LBSU has a great art program. And if not there, to USD where Didi was and Jodi was going to go. USC was a VERY distant third.
Until I stepped foot on campus. Just seeing the carved rock entrance signs that say University of Southern California gave me chills. And they still do. Seeing the red brick campus and all the students and everything going on there— it was what college was supposed to be. At least to me. So I marched us to the bookstore and bought a sweatshirt. A white hooded sweatshirt with USC on it in Cardinal and Gold.
And it was this moment that I knew this was where I was going to college.
It was this sweatshirt I wore to my Long Beach State visit. It was this sweatshirt I wore to my USD visit. It was this sweatshirt I was wearing on the drive home when we got snowed in at Mountain Pass and had to backtrack to Baker to find a room for the night. And wore to bed because there was a hole in the window, the heat did not work, and the advertised cable television out front that we were so relieved about—well, every time the lobby TV changed channels, so did the one in our room. My Dad and I laughed and laughed and laughed that night.
It was this sweatshirt I wore to nearly every football game of my collegiate career. It was this sweatshirt I wore on every break home—just so that everyone knew I no longer lived there, that I’d gotten out and was going to a fabulous school.
It was this sweatshirt that was at the ready when my parents told me they were getting divorced. It was this sweatshirt that was there when nine years later, they remarried each other.
It is this sweatshirt I am wearing in my first ever picture with my newborn niece. She is now 15 and looking at USC in her future.
It was this sweatshirt I wore when I moved to San Diego. It was this sweatshirt I wore when I moved back to LA. And nearly every weekend for twenty years. It’s been to Chicago, to Las Vegas, to New York, to San Francisco, to Phoenix, to Tucson, to D.C., to Orlando, to Hawaii, to Philadelphia, to tiny Ely, NV; to Paris, to Cabo San Lucas, to St. Thomas, Antigua, Anguilla and St. Martin.
It was this sweatshirt that I wore when I went thru the not changing my clothes phase of breakups with the most serious and loved of my exboyfriends.. It was this sweatshirt that I again turned to when I made the difficult choice to leave The Philly Fan because it was healthier for me. It is this sweatshirt that until recently, I did not even realize had been such a witness to my life. And such a talisman of comfort and home and family. When I chose USC, I took the first step into my adult life. And it is fitting that this first purchase at my school would become my oldest surviving and still in use and most beloved sweatshirt.
Linus ain’t got nothin’ on me with his blanket.
FIGHT ON!
-Your Gridiron Goddess, who will replace this picture tomorrow with one of her in that aforementioned 20 year old sweatshirt. When I am not, you know, drunkity.
Hey hey hey football fans and fanatics and fiends. Your Gridiron Goddess is ready to nod off for the night, but I cannot shake the building inner feelings of WOO HOO (to quote Homer Simpson) about the first Pre-Season NFL games kicking off Thursday night! And my fellow SC alum Carson Palmer is going to be MY kickoff player to watch as his Bengals take on the much beleaguered and maligned and in need of a new GM more than anything else Detroit Lions. (BTW, Detroit, my GM services are available. lol)
Jones set to make his pro wrestling debut. Yeah, I so see this going well. Not. Um, Pacman, dude. Did you learn nothing from Johnnie Morton’s ill fated journey into the world of mixed martial arts? Pay particular attention, Pacman, to the way Morton, a former Trojan, got his ass handed to him all right quick like? But, hey, on the other hand, your name IS Pacman and that is a pretty freaking apropos wrestling moniker.
Gridiron Goddess 