Home Team

As we creep closer to the Super Bowl, I submit the following item (with an emphasis on "creep"): Upset that his seven-year-old son wouldn't wear a Green Bay Packers jersey during the team's playoff victory Saturday, a man restrained the boy for an hour with tape and taped the jersey onto him. Police said the incident sounded strange when reported at first, but the mother took pictures with her cell phone and that type of evidence is difficult to dispute. The father was taken to the county jail and held until Wednesday, when he pleaded no contest, paid a fine of one hundred eighty-six dollars, and was released.
It's easy for me to sneer my disapproval. I have been fortunate to have a son who has followed easily in the wake of all of my obsessions. It may have helped that he was born into a world that hosted its first Bronco Super Bowl win, and the jersey we pulled over his head could just as easily have had Bob the Builder or Green Day on it, for all he cared at the time. But now it's ten years later, and I find myself whistling in the dark. When we're watching sports on TV, my son will always ask, "Who are we rooting for?" He instinctively wants to be on dad's team. He's a good kid that way.
But I know that there is a reckoning coming. I know that his blind allegiance to all things Dad will soon go the way of, well, Bob the Builder. There will come a day when he will have to carefully consider just how much grief he wants to bring on himself as a Denver Broncos fan living in the heart of the Oakland Raider Nation. Given his personality, I expect that he will still steer clear of the dominant paradigm. He might just decide that he wants a Packers jersey next Christmas.