Are you ready for some football?

In the last few years fall as moved up on my list of great times of the year. That is because that is when football season begins!

I have never been a big sports fan. When the Carolina Panthers franchise came into existence in 1993, I was attending a transmitter school in Quincy, Ill having been with WGHP less than a year. The franchise had been awarded 3 days before I left. I went to the only place you could buy a Panthers sweatshirt then, Belk's, at Four Seasons. I bought it because I really thought that it was a good thing for our state and I wanted to show my support. I then went on my trip.

One day into my week stay there I pulled out the sweatshirt and put it on. It was a chilly fall day and I didn't want to tote a coat around. When I arrived at the factory, many of the guys wanted to know what a "Carolina Panther" was. Most of these guys were from the Mid West and were Bear's or Viking's or Lion's or Brown's fans. Most were amused that the NFL had come to the Carolina's. But all of a sudden, I was "one of the guys" since my area had a team. It didn't matter that we were a team in name only since no coach had been named yet, no players had been signed, no plays run, no touchdowns, no wins or no loses. It was the "well my team has so and so and he will do so and so" followed by someone else arguing that when so and so played for HIS team he did this and this.

When you "have a team" in your area, it is different that when you "have someone else’s team" because you are not in a teams market. When you live in a secondary area of a team, like the Carolina's did for many years, many people have many "teams." No one team dominates. In the northern and eastern parts of the North Carolina, many people were Washington Redskins fans. People from Charlotte west and south into South Carolina were Atlanta Falcon fans. Growing up in the eastern part of the North Carolina, my dad was a big Skins fan. My wife’s family, living south of Asheville followed the Falcon's. The Panthers come to town and now we all root for the White/Black and Blue.

Oh sure, you still have Falcon fans, and Redskin fans around here, but for me, the Panthers brought me into football in a way that the Redskins and Falcons never could. They were always someone else’s team. The Panthers are MY team!! That chilly day in Illinois opened my eyes to that fact. And I STILL have that sweatshirt. I don’t wear it as much anymore since it is starting to get thread bare and is now 13 years old but every time I see it, I get chills and can’t wait for the team to hit the field. I am still not a sports fan, (I could care less about hockey or baseball or basketball) but when football starts, I get pretty rabid about it.

So far things look pretty good this season for the Panthers, but it is only preseason. HHHMM. Tine to make sure I am NOT working Super Bowl weekend.