The Super Bowl is over!

Today is Tuesday, February 6^th, 2018. Philadelphia Eagles fans are entering Stage 2 of their hangovers, following their dramatic Super Bowl victory over the Evil Empire.  Stage 2 is the point where the physical agony of overindulgence succumbs to the grouchy, tired reality that your desk job is still there waiting for you.  This used to be the moment on the calendar in my sports-following life when I would shift all of my focus to UConn basketball – or just college basketball in general.  That was when UConn was still in the Big East, college basketball wasn’t watered down with one-and-done freshmen, big men actually had some moves down in the low post, and it still resembled the beautiful game I remember watching as a child of the late 80’s and early 90’s.  I still love my Huskies, and I still prefer the college game over the NBA.  Yet there is still a lull that fills the month of February with clouds and misery that even a mild gambling addiction and some European soccer can’t fully cure. 

When I was 12 years old, my folks packed up the old family station wagon, Griswold style, and made the permanent trek from Enfield, Connecticut to Hilliard, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, where my younger sisters and I would grow up and eventually raise families of our own.  My older brother stayed back in Connecticut to finish up high school before his adventurous nature led him to several stops, mostly in the western states, ultimately landing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

When you choose a life in Columbus, OH, you choose to accept clouds and misery as a regular part of your existence.  From an overall image perspective, our community would be well served if all inbound flights to John Glenn Columbus International Airport were restricted to only Central Ohio residents between the months of November and March.  The state of our city in those months is not the perception we need to be conveying to outsiders.  It’s cold, it sucks, and we deal with it.  We deal with it because Columbus has many other fantastic attributes that have nothing to do with our climate.  This isn’t intended to be a review of Columbus, so I’ll spare you my sales pitch.  The point is that it’s gross outside right now. 

Miserable Februaries are familiar to me.  Every February of my life has been spent in the bitter cold.  My parents are high school sweethearts from Kingston, New York, a charming city with a rich history located 100 miles north of Yankee Stadium on the Hudson River.  Having originated in upstate New York where the Yankees and Mets are king; then migrating to a suburb of Hartford just a few minutes south of the Massachusetts border and Red Sox territory; finally landing in Columbus, OH, smack dab in the middle of the I-71 corridor between Cleveland and Cincinnati, naturally I grew up as a diehard…DETROIT TIGERS fan.