College Football Season Kick Off & Garbage Can

Jennifer was so looking forward to the start of the 2023 college football season.

Jennifer never paid much attention to football until we moved to Pittsburgh. As many of you know, I am a Notre Dame fan. When we got to Pittsburgh we realized that Notre Dame would be playing the University of Pittsburgh. What we quickly found out, (thanks to our friends Karla and Dan Brennan), that it was cheaper to buy season tickets to the Pitt Games than it was to try and buy two individual tickets to just the Notre Dame Game.

Karla and Dan took us under their wing and let's us join their group of season ticket holders. The first year we tailgated in the Andy Warhol museum parking garage. The second year we moved into the Heinz Stadium parking lot close to the stadium. When we moved into that area, Dan took the tailgating to a much higher level (steam trays, higher end food and drink, etc.). However, we had great fun both years. Thanks Karla and Dan for some great memories.

It was after attending the Pitt games that first season that Jennifer started to really get into College football. She started to learn about the rules and positions and she started listening to the ESPN program "Full Ride". She loved listening to Rick Neuheisel on that program. Especially when we were in the car, but she would also listen at home on her I-pad. She also really liked viewing the SEC shorts channel on YouTube and got a lot of good laughs from their skits.

She remained a Pitt Fan (even after we moved away) and followed them and watched their games whenever she could. She enjoyed singing Neil Diamonds "Sweet Caroline" at the end of the third quarter. She loved when Pitt played the Naval Academy, and the midshipman would be at the game in their dress whites.

The Patrino family is related to Jennifer's family on Jennifer's Mom side of the family. So she was excited when it was announced that Bobby Patrino was going to be the next head coach of UNLV. However that excitement was short lived when it was then announced that Bobby was not going to coach UNLV but was going to coach with Jimbo Fischer at Texas A&M. At that point, Bobby was dead to her (just kidding). She was not a A&M fan and she was definitely not a fan of Jimbo Fischer.

She never got into the NFL but she loved college football. It was fun watching as she became more knowledgeable about the game. She loved the college bowl season and would watch as many of the bowls as she could.

Last year we did get to go to a UNLV vs Fresno State Game in Allegiant Stadium with a group from Sun City. She enjoyed getting to see the Stadium. We were scheduled to go the Wyoming vs UNLV game this year.

I will miss watching games with her and/or hearing her watch a game by herself. Sometimes she would be hollering about a call by the officials or when a coaching staff made a bad play call.. The start of college football this weekend just did not feel the same. However, my Irish looked solid as they thumped Navy today.

As I mentioned in previous blog posts, there were some things that got me a "God Damn It Joe" followed by a butt chewing. Leaving the cap off the tooth paste was the champion of the butt chewing but running a close second was not putting a new bag in the kitchen garbage can after emptying the full one.

I just caught myself almost forgetting to do that tonight. Prior to moving to Mesquite the can we had required us to tie some small knots in the bag to keep it from falling into the can when trash got put in the bag.

My fat fingers just would not get the knots right, so I would leave that up to Jennifer to do. So I always used the "not my job" defense, when the butt chewing would start. It worked a couple of times, but I usually would still get the evil eye and a butt chewing. When we moved we got rid of the old can and got a new one that did not require the knot tying so my old defense got absolutely no where. Just to make her happy I gave myself a butt chewing tonight, "God Damn It Joe" and all.