Bleeding Red and Black

I was lounging in a vast church family center this afternoon letting my blood drain out through a tube, setting it forth on its journey to somebody else's veins. I got to thinking about that first entry I made on this little page. I hope it didn't sound like I was setting up a Lewis Grizzard Tributarium. I'm hardly qualified to be the guy to run something like that.
Lewis and I share a great-grandfather, a number of aunts and uncles, and a very few face-to-face conversations. We share a Georgia heritage, down to the bleeding of Red as well as Black, and like Lewis, I have spent more than my share of time on a newspaper deadline. Other than that, I don't desire, nor do I deserve, to be compared to that boyhood friend of Weyman C. Wannamaker, Jr., but I do have to let myself think that I can string a few words together that might make someone giggle when they're supposed to be printing out the T.P.S. Reports.
To that end, I have to give you a peek into my little corner of Bulldog Nation. It's a land where a bunch of guys, in a quest to stave off middle age and cling to what The Boss referred to so perfectly as the 'Glory Days', whittle away the hours compiling and sorting through limitless information on one topic -- and one topic only -- the Football Program of the University of Georgia. When a new nugget of innuendo is released into the CyberEther, that rumor is immediately dispersed through an email network that would rival the communications system of any Third-world principality. Whether it be the potential last second signing of a the second-best punter in southern Alabama who was just about to sign with Friggin' Auburn, or even that yet another Gator tight-end has been arrested for shoplifting lingerie from the Gainesville Mall Victoria's Secret, I know about it . . . almost before it happens.
Today's big news was the annual release of the Southeastern Conference Helmet Schedule. A Microsoft Excel chart of who the Dawgs, as well as the rest of the greatest conference in college football, will be playing -- some four months from now. The Helmet Schedule is like visual ice cream for my buddy Keith. He savors the colors and shadows. His eyes stare at the matchups until they glaze. It matters not that he has known Georgia's schedule backward and forward for months. Actually looking upon the logos in faux three dimensions makes that stretch from Tennessee to LSU to Florida to Auburn seem all the more real, and suddenly September, and the national championship run, doesn't seem so very, very far away.
All our blood will run hotter in the Fall. Football will happen to us, and our poor wives, again in just four months. As our Dawgs suit up for a summer of practices in the hot Athens sun, I am reminded of a column I wrote in 1987. I was covering sports for the Times-Georgian in Carrollton, Ga., and one Friday I typed a few words about parents putting too much pressure on their kids out at the local high school football practice. 'Blood pressure can be deadly,' I wrote. I actually received an honest-to-Herschel piece of fan mail thanking me for the column. With my big head wobbling atop my thoroughly un-linebacker-like 17-year-old shoulders, I strode into a book signing at Cumberland Mall in Marietta. I walked up to the table and handed the paper to Lewis Grizzard.
"I just thought you might want to see how the next generation was coming along." I said, before practically sprinting off into the food court before my embarrassment could settle in. About a half hour later, Lewis was leaving and saw me on a bench. He asked me what my plans were, and he didn't hold back a smile when I told him I was on my way to Athens when the summer was over to get started on my journalism degree. He told me right then not to bother with it. He said to go over and get a degree in whatever I wanted, to enjoy college, to root on the Dawgs and to give him a call at the Atlanta Journal when I got done. He said he would get me going in the newspaper business if that was what I wanted to do then.
Seven years later, I was on my way out of Athens with a Master's in education and a cooler full of stories I was ready to pop open and pour over the heads of the greater Atlanta area. About the time I rolled past Stone Mountain, there was an update on the radio. Lewis's heart had finally given out.
It's been more than a decade since then, and I'm finally getting around telling that story. I promise, the next one will be a lot funnier. I can feel it in my blood.