Sunday, February 5

For Bill Cowher

Before moving to America football was... foot-ball, widely known here as soccer. Most of the kids in my High School preferred football over any other sport but of course i stuck with basketball. And before i came here football err the NFL was all but naught. The NFL Season had just started when i arrived here in L.A., Adrian is an avid Chargers fan so i got to see a lot of ballgames with him. Even though i was oblivious with the sport's rules & objective i was hooked, perhaps because it is complex and starkly competitive.

The Chargers went to the Super Bowl that year but was demolished by San Francisco much to Adrian's disappointment. Shortly after the Super Bowl i flew to Chicago for bootcamp and soon after bootcamp i was on my way to another completely and utterly new world, to Sardegna, Italy. I was in almost complete petrify when my orders read "Overseas Orders". I had just started to get acclimated with California's chic lifestyle and there i was packing for another far away unfamiliar place.

When i was in Italy i hung out with a fellow named Wright, Johnny Wright. He was a portly man, very obnoxious and looked exactly like Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Star and Producer of Oscar nominated movie Capote) with darker hair. Johnny was born in Trenton, NJ (yes Nuu Jaarsey) and the biggest Pittsburgh Steeler fan i've ever met. He would often lose his voice and sometimes his shirt after a Pittsburgh game at a bar that almost never failed to get rowdy. He always broke a chair or threw a beer bottle at the tv in frustration or sometimes in exultation lol. Between Steeler games, breaking chairs and throwing beer bottles at the TV (sometimes full beers) and his Nuu Jaarsey accent i became, in a sordid kind of a way, good friends with the him I think mostly because i was mesmerized with the accent hahaha.

The Steelers made it to the Super Bowl that year against Americas team the Dallas Cowboys. Despite being Rivals, Johnny and i and some other Steeler and Cowboy fans chipped in for a private party in a Bar Restaurant near the Marina. I remember making a bet with my superior officer who was a huge Cowboy fan for a beer for each td scored. Well if you remember what happened it was a close game until O'Donnell threw two crucial interceptions late in the 4th quarter crushing Johnny's hopes of a Lombardy trophy for his team... while i lost by a beer and a half.

When time expired and the game was over, Bill Cowher, the sneery faced Steeler coach dropped his head-set and trudged towards the locker room when he was met by a consoling hug from his 8 year old daughter, Meagan in midfield. The maudlin scene was re-played several times. You could even read Meagan's lips as she muttered the words "it's okay daddy" ...

Ever since that scene i've rooted for the Pittsburgh Steelers and especially for Bill Cohwer. Yes i admit... a soppy way of selecting a football team to root for.

Congratulations on the win Bill....

Is it me or does NJ seem ubiquitous, suddenly.... hmmn

2 Comments:

At 11:42 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

I heard the Panthers want a piece of the Steelers

 
At 12:00 PM, Blogger Marc Gabay said...

The Novel i'm reading right now "The Rule of Four" is set in the Princeton University......

 

Post a Comment

<< Home