Because there's a thread that runs through my life, from the time I became a fan when they went to their first Super Bowl, through all the years, to now. Here, typing this.
In that time there have been other threads running concurrently; family, friends, a wife, lovers; buddies, acquaintances, work pals. Every one of those threads ran out at some point in time before now. People fell away; others showed colors they had kept hidden; cowards, hiding their daggers until a vulnerable moment. Others cheated, lied, stole or betrayed their way out, cutting their threads where they stood.
There's only one thread left. There's only one live conduit to the boy that I was, that night in '73, burning out the horn on my friend's 1962 Mercury Comet while we celebrated with seemingly every other soul in the city. It's the same conduit than runs through my education in this noble game, through the respect, admiration and love for the men who gave everything they had in them for the game; I found that love on its fields and its front offices, and in the hearts of players and coaches and personnel men, and of an owner who mortgaged his own life to the hilt in order to give his Hall-of-Fame Head Coach everything he could, to honor his dedication and contribution.
Today, it is all I have left that connects me to the boy I was and the man I thought I could be.
It's all I have.
