It’s expecting a lot for me to write anything at all during the play-off season.

I’m not an expert—at all—but I’ve been watching football for a very long time. My Daddy, back in the '50's, watched religiously. I was allowed to sit with him--if I wasn’t a pest.

When I stuck with it, probably more for his company during those long cold winter afternoons than any deep interest, he began to explain plays and eventually he would even tolerate questions.

We had a black and white Zenith TV, the kind that sat up high on a speaker pedestal, because it was also a radio. It was a better radio, I think, than TV, simply because that was where technology was at that point. Anyhow, we got 2 channels reliably. Occasionally, a third would come in, but this tended to “snow” or fade to nothing just as you were getting interested.

The first football games I watched were those of local colleges, like Syracuse, and pro teams in our latitude, such as Buffalo, Cleveland, Green Bay and Pittsburgh. Today this is “rust belt” but in those days the unions were strong, foreign demand for US steel was high, and those towns bustled fatly. These teams are still the ones which claim my loyalty, through the good, the embarrassing, and the worst of years.

We watched games through fixed cameras at center field and the goals, mostly from high up. A decently violent snow storm in Buffalo—no rare thing in those days—and you could barely see the players, much less the ball. Everything dissolved into moving blobs of gray and white. The same wind that was howling outside our windows could be seen inside the stadium. That was the sign of a really great game--the kind that threatened the hardcore fans, (in those days before down and hollowfill became common,) with pneumonia.

My heart still beats faster when I tune in for a game and see snow, see a frozen field and hear those hallowed words “Wind chills are in the ‘teens.” This makes for a crazy game with lots of turnovers and wretched ground conditions for every player who finds himself stomped into the turf.

Snow assures me it will be a game of sheer endurance. The winners will be the ones with good hands, with utter disregard for pain, and a major supply of Good Old Dumb Luck. Cozy domes and southern stadiums fill me, a northeastern football geezer, with contempt for all things soft, all things new-fangled.

I think football used to be faster. (It certainly was less violent, but that's rumination for another time.)

There are so many ads now breaking up the game, so much hot air, and so much empty commentary. In the old days, the announcers came from radio, and while they might talk stats, they were in the habit of describing what was going on. Today, they’re all so busy filling time with the sound of their own voices, I find myself mostly watching with "mute" clicked.

I’m rejoicing this year, with those Pittsburgh Steelers heading to the Super Bowl! I’m not sure exactly how they got there, with the early season stumbling they did, but I’m glad they managed. It might be hot, though, in Florida, not the best venue for their cold weather talent. We'll have to see.