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Kris, our latest guest poster in the Why I Love… series, tells us why she loves a team that the people in Florida go crazy for, the mighty Seminoles. I (Sarah) almost went to FSU. I had a deposit on my dorm room and everything. I changed my mind but this post makes me wonder what it would have been like to be a part of this. I would have been a sophomore when Bobby Bowden won his first National Championship. I also think I would have had one hell of a time going tailgaiting with Kris.

Let me be clear: I don’t love football. I don’t have a pro team that makes me violent when they lose, a player who I’d smack a grandma for dissing. I read ESPN only when there’s a death or a scandal. While the rest of America packs a fridge and a couch on Sundays, I spend the day shopping or catching up on 48 Hours Mystery or clipping my mother’s cats’ nails. Fantasy teams is a term restricted to porn. I just don’t have the lust for the game, the passion that drives the believers to purchase exorbitant cable packages and helmets to house their beer. But I have a college team, one to which I’m faithful. It’s one I wear face paint, metallic pom poms, and every viable shade of garnet for. I’ve wilted in 100 degree heat for this team, celebrated them to a national championship at their height and defended them when the going got rough. It continues to be rough. So no, I don’t love just football. I love Florida State football.

I love Florida State football because it brought my spirit back. In high school, I was the picture of faith and support. Never a cheerleader or bandie, I nonetheless sat on the sidelines to support our Wildcats. I traveled to away games, forced to ride the hump in the back of whatever Taurus or K Car’s owner agreed to drive. We knew every word to We Didn’t Start the Fire and even cooler, most REM songs, even the ones they didn’t play on the radio. We went to games wearing whatever was closest to J. Crew at the time, filling our falls with pegged jeans, crew necked sweaters and barn jackets. We drank hot cocoa in the days before coffee was cool and screamed in high pitches when a skinny senior got the 70-yard touchdown. We clipped the article when a friend signed on the dotted line for the 1990 Boston College team. For a few months each year, under canopy of blazing red and orange leaves, we loved football.

I went to college the picture of spirit. I wanted to tailgate, to wear gray sweatshirts bearing my school’s name, to eat 7-layer dip out of the back of a wood-paneled station wagon. I pictured college would be what it might have been in the early 60s: letterman’s jackets and all the pomp and circumstance a proud community could display. It wasn’t to be. Football wasn’t a thing at my school; sports weren’t remotely their forte. I spent four years barely existing at that college – scotch taping my university sticker to the back window rather than displaying it proudly. My dissatisfaction was the result of so many things, of course – of a bad academic fit and a heart that was elsewhere – but I hated it. As I’ve heard so many say about their experiences in high school, I couldn’t wait to get out of college. I just knew there were bigger and better things. Turns out there were.

I went to my first FSU game in 1998. Dozens would follow. I don’t think I’ll ever forget those games at Doak; 80,000 fans strong, there wasn’t an open seat in the house. Before each and every match up, a van would drive through town with the opposing team’s mascot impaled on its roof. Tailgating began at breakfast, at times simply a continuation of a Friday night out. Students stood in long lines to translate coupons into tickets, walked in throngs to the stadium, packs of khaki shorts and caps and visors. And these fans were rabid. Both young and ancient, they were on their feet for all quarters, often in the unmerciful panhandle sun, their hairlines dampened by sweat. These people didn’t just love football; they lived it. And I did too. In my mid-twenties, I learned to light a grill and make a proper hamburger. I ate my family’s weight in tater tots and grew something of a right arm muscle from doing the tomahawk chop. I felt the roar of the faithful when we scored and held my head up proudly when we lost. When out of town, I refreshed my browser for scores more than a sane person should. Florida State football gave me a home, a place to pledge my loyalty. Florida State, in its late-90’s heyday, brought my spirit back.

I too love Florida State football because it connected me to my father. Since he was a child, my dad loved the sport. He played it on the farm as a boy, watched his local high school games with great dedication, and while at college at the University of Pittsburgh, found his own home team. He was fiercely loyal to his chosen few – most notably the Steelers – but cheered on our locals, as well. Dad was an engineer and was meticulous, detailed in all things. He was sure to tell me that while New York always laid claim to the Giants, that they weren’t theirs at all, but in fact played in my motherland of New Jersey and were technically “the Football Giants.” I cared not.

As a young girl, I cared about sticker books and grading fake papers and learning to bake muffins with a light bulb. I read constantly and grimaced when he encouraged any physical activity. Soccer? Fail. Softball? I’m glad there isn’t photographic evidence. Dad fared no better with my older sister, a woman who chose books over basketball, nor my mother, who has never, to my extensive knowledge, worn a pair of jeans or sneakers. On Sunday nights, he’d be banished to the den, snack basket in hand, while we watched Murder She Wrote and ironed the next day’s clothing. My father’s loud claps would shake the living room door and I’d grin and wonder just what was so special about men running around on the grass. I’d join him for a few minutes at a time, hoping to gain some insight if only by osmosis alone. Football? It was something of a special club to which only men belonged. There had to be something to it. Turns out there was.

It didn’t happen until I was 28, but it happened. My parents had moved to Virginia by then, to the condo where they would soon retire and where, sadly, my father would pass away in 2008. Home for Thanksgiving, we watched our first Florida State game together. He explained the nuances of the game to me, why running up the middle hardly works and just how far you really want to kick a ball down the field. One game became a few, became halftime conversations courtesy of archaic cell phones and the post-game retelling of where I was when. Over my time in Tallahassee, Dad amassed quite a collection of fan fare: an FSU Dad pin, a garnet and gold foam finger, a pair of truly awful socks that somehow turned out to be a lucky charm. When I was at school for a losing home game, my father would call apologetically, confessing he’d forgotten to don his socks for the first two quarters. I’d instruct him to rectify the situation quickly. He’d chuckle and oblige. It often worked. When I was on his couch for games, we’d tailgate off my parents’ kitchen table and high five when appropriate. When the game wasn’t televised, we’d listen to the live streaming of each play as drives unfolded. And in the days before the dawn of DVR, when a particularly important episode of Something struck my mother’s fancy, my father and I would retire to the den, chips and salsa in hand, to clap loudly until the door shook.

So yes. I love Florida State football. I love it for the pride it brings its fans, for the absurd narcissism it brings its players, for the passion it lends the name of the university. I love it for bringing my heart back to stories about my years at school, for the ties it’s afforded me, for the hangers in my closet devoted to all things garnet and the countless hours I’ve spent drinking cheap beer in its honor. Few things make me as feisty, as defensive in my loyalty. Let the record show that I’d never really smack a grandma for mocking one of our Seminoles. Unless, of course, she was a Florida fan.