Putting your Dolphins fandom in perspective on Thanksgiving
By Brian Miller
The Miami Dolphins disappointed a lot of people this year and it is hard to find a reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving season when the team looks as though they are going through the motions.
That being said it really isn’t that difficult. More often than not we tend to lose focus on what sports really means. We get caught up in the cheers and jeers and the merchandise. We ridicule and praise a players salary, performance, attitude, ego, the look of their hair style, and even whether they kneel, sit, stand, or stay in the locker room.
For fans it’s about winning. It’s about cheering on their favorite team and flaunting victories with Dolphins merchandise. We pay money to go to games, we pay money to travel, we pay money for merchandise. So naturally we expect the product on the field to match that which pull out of our pockets.
What we lose focus in though, is what it really means.
A good friend of mine on Twitter @ian693 reminded me earlier this week why the game isn’t as important as we all tend to think. See “E” posted a picture of himself with his young daughter decked out in their Dolphins gear at last Sunday’s game against the Buccaneers. Ian made it clear that he wasn’t happy about the game results but he also made this pretty clear too.
I will say one thing. I enjoy Sunday #MiamiDolphins games when I take my youngest daughter. We get there 2-3 hours before, eat lunch, play catch, & play cards. When she’s older, she won’t remember the wins or losses, but she will remember that we spent some quality time together! pic.twitter.com/UPwB41XNLq
— Big E (@ian693) November 20, 2017
There is so much truth that. I remember about eight years ago, can’t believe it has been tha long. I took my six-year-old son to a Dolphins game. In fact that calendar year I took him to two. The first he was more interested in the Nachos, soda-pop, waving his Dolphins beads, and trying to get on the jumbo-tron. The 2nd game was a pre-season contest. We stood outside with the tailgater’s tossing a football in the parking lot waiting to go inside.
It poured down rain that day. Not just a heavy rain, it was a torrential downpour. Fans scrambled for the tunnels because it was half-time. We sat in our seats getting drenched. I said to my son, “You want to get under the tunnel?” “Nope, if they wanted us to stay dry they would have put a roof on this place.”
We were soaked. But this was Florida and by the end of the 4th quarter we were completely dry thanks to the sweltering heat. My son is now a teenager and as all parents find out we outlive our usefulness when they move from being kids to young adults.
He doesn’t watch football with me anymore. He is a gamer and prefers to stay in his internet world. But here is what my friend Big E was talking about. When you filter through the trash in his room and make your way to his bookcase, there is a leather football on the bottom shelf. On the post is a pair of old weathered aqua and orange bead strands.
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I have thrown them both in a box of junk several times over the years as I have attempted to clean his room but they keep ending up back on his shelf. He doesn’t remember if the Dolphins won or loss that day. What he does remember is that it was hot and that it rained and that it was something he and I did together. He remembers the ambience and the other fans. He remembers that jumbo-tron.
See behind all that junk on his shelf, way in the back, in a frame you can barely see is a picture of he and I standing at one of the rails of what is now Hard Rock Stadium. It is what he remembers and it’s something that time, age, and adulthood won’t take away. It was a great day in his life that even now six years later he won’t toss aside.
The beads are worn, the colors are chipped, and the football could use some air but every time I walk into his room, I see them. I remember when he got them. I smile because of all the things we have done together in our lives, this is what he remembers too. I don’t remember who won. I don’t remember the score. I remember being there with my son and apparently that’s what he remembers too.
That is why we watch football.
Happy Thanksgiving!