Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Max and I sat in the rain last Saturday at the Iowa State football game. We both dressed appropriately for the day with Max even borrowing his oldest sister’s raincoat because when it is raining you don’t really even care that you’re wearing a raincoat that you wouldn’t get caught dead in the rest of the time. It wasn’t necessarily cold, but it didn’t take long for us to realize that our feet were going to be wet the entire game, which really has to be the most frustrating feeling when the rest of you is dry. The longtime friend who gave us the tickets was surprised that we had indeed gone to the game because of the weather, and I had even told Max that if the rain got too bad we could go back to the apartment and watch the game on television with his sister.

It was a great game and a fun time as we cheered loudly and made fun of the Kansas band who marched at halftime, the woodwind section marching without their instruments. I kept going back to that text I had received earlier telling me that I must really be hard core to sit through a game in the rain. Isn’t that what we do though? We would sit through that kind of weather if one of our own kids was playing. It’s even fair to say that I’ve spent more than one day working out in the rain to get the job done. I even remember a few times in high school going to football games and standing in just a t-shirt while it poured only to come home with a nasty head cold.

We pay to see a college game. It is entertainment and those who are fans live and die with the result of each snap. We are most of the time unaware that we are watching a group of young people who are playing because they love the game, they are doing so to get through school, or they have hopes of someday getting paid to play the sport. We fans of the college game are like the extended family of the student athletes which makes perfect sense when asked why we would sit through pouring rain, or bone-chilling cold to watch a game. Those young people are in a way like our own children and we go to support them and the university that we love. Things sometimes are much simpler explained when we don’t think much about the why, but instead just keep cheering, even when our feet are wet. See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.