New Mexico: Football!

Maria reading the sports pages before the upcoming game.

About a week before our trip to Albuquerque, Maria calls me to check if I've got everything planned out. While she likes to travel, she's big into planning and knows that I have a penchant for last minute flights, hotels and car arrangements. I tell her a little white lie and say that everything is planned and ready to go.

Okay, it's not exactly a white lie. Everything is planned out. I've got the flights, got the car reservation and have the first nights' hotel reserved. It's just the other nights that haven't been reserved yet. I know where we're staying, I just need to inform the hotel that we'll be staying there. Either way, it's all good.

Of course, Balloon Fiesta is in town, which also means that the population of Albuquerque doubles, but I don't have any trouble securing us a room.

But the real reason she's calling is to negotiate an activity (or inactivity as it were). She's cool with going anywhere and doing anything, but she wants to know if we can take some time Sunday to watch the Redskins game on television.

Huh?

In the world that I'm used to living in, it's typically the man who's trying to negotiate with the woman for some football time, not the other way around. Truth be told, I really don't care for football. I almost never watch it on tv, and when I had season tickets to the Ravens, I almost never went to the games. There's more going on in my life than sitting in front of the tv on any day or night (much less Sundays) to watch anything - especially football. It's just not part of my reality.

But I'm an accommodating and affable chap and we find a place in Santa Fe to watch the Redskins on a big screen tv at the bar. She's got on her Redskins jersey and I offer to beat up the guy wearing the Eagles jersey just because. Luckily, she's not into violence which saves me from getting beat up (since I don't like to fight) by the rather large New Mexican local wearing the Philly jersey.

I'm cool with the Redskins, but she's a fan of the Colts and I can't support the Colts. As a true Baltimorean, I cannot support the team that sprinted away in the night back in 1983. I just can't. She's a Colts fan and a Ravens hater because she dislikes Baltimore, my home town.

Okay, I know I said that football really doesn't matter to me, but when you're a Colts fan and a Ravens hater because you dislike my city, we have a problem. Publicly, I'm feigning disinterest in the games surrounding us (we can see all three teams playing separate games). The Redskins are winning, the Colts are winning - hell, even the Ravens are winning.

Secretly, I'm hoping for a Ravens victory and Colts defeat so I can tell her to go suck it.

But no matter how much of a lead the Ravens may have in the first half of the game, those years holding season tickets taught me one thing: they can't hold the lead. Inevitably, the Ravens will falter and give up the lead and their victory, leaving us fans bitter and disappointed. And today, the Ravens stayed true to form losing to the Tennessee Titans 13 to 10. Crap.

Still feigning disinterest in Maria's glory that the Ravens lost and both the Redskins and Colts won, I pray to the football gods that my Baltimore Ravens will crush and destroy Peyton Manning and his Indianapolis Colts next Sunday so I can tell them all to suck it next weekend.