For the love of football

 Each fall, the start of the football season brings a lot of hope, stress, and anxiety.

It has nothing to do with my favorite teams and their quest for a championship. It has more to do with my access to those teams and all the off-field shenanigans going on. For some time now I’ve been telling myself that I’m done with football. No more. But like a moth to a flame, I keep coming back.

At the end of the football season last year, I told my wife I was not going to cover any football games this fall so I could focus my time on finishing the book I’m writing. Well, the book isn’t done, but once again I will be trolling the sidelines of Kyle Field photographing the Aggies in action for a company called Image of Sport. And once again I’m on a game-by-game basis for credentials to photograph the Houston Texans. Considering that I have not been approved for Texans credentials in two years, I’m not holding my breath for it to happen this year, but you never know.

Sports photography, and football in particular, have been both vocation and avocation for me. I’ve never worked full-time as a photographer, but photojournalism is what got me into this profession and it’s something I’ve loved doing as part of my job and as a hobby.

The first professional football game I got to photograph was in 1985 at old Mile High Stadium when the Denver Gold took on the New Jersey Generals in the United States Football League (USFL). Since then, I had intermittent access to the NFL until 2016 when I received season credentials to the Texans. I covered the Texans for more than seven seasons until our move to Aggieland brought it to an end.

Each season and each game I find myself getting caught up in the excitement of the up-close action. Likewise, I find myself becoming disillusioned by all the off-field crap going on at both the pro and college levels. I think the NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) deal and the transfer portal have wrecked college sports. Team loyalty is pretty much gone. For all the talk about Aggie loyalty, the transfer portal is proving that to be a weakened pillar of character.

College football, like the pros, has become mired in greed. The whole thing has become so convoluted that you now have players trying to leave the NFL to return to college. I’m sorry, but once you’ve gone pro, your amateur status has ended. The infusion of gambling into the sport just makes things worse.

Another thing that sours me on football is the lack of patriotism and respect for our country. It’s at all levels. If you’ve ever watched players during the performance of the national anthem, you will notice that most of them assume a protest stance. They refuse to place their hand over their heart and stand at attention. Many of them will lower their heads or look elsewhere. They’ll keep their hands down or else grasp their shoulder pads at the neck opening. Some won’t even bother to stand.

That behavior bothers the heck out of me. It’s one thing to stand up for racial equality or whatever your cause may be, but it’s quite another to disrespect the flag and the country that affords you all the privileges and glory that you’re receiving. In other words, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

It’s all of this off-the-field, behind-the-scenes stuff that puts a damper on the thrill of the game. Still, I wade through the muck and disgust of the politics of it all and yearn for just one more season, one more game in the limelight. Is this the year the Aggies win a national championship? Is this season the Texans go to the Super Bowl? If it is, I want to be a part of it. I enjoy the hype, the hope, the excitement, and anxiety of a new season. Football is back, baby!

Gig ’em, Aggies!