Football weekend. My longtime friend Tom and I made the trip into Houston yesterday. We’re ready to watch our Houston Cougars take on the Kansas Jayhawks. We’re staying with another longtime friend, David. He and Tom are fraternity brothers. I hooked up with them because Tom’s sister is one of my wife’s best friends. David cooked us a great meal last night with more planned today before we head over the stadium to see what our boys can do.

Over the years the three of us have watched a lot of Cougar football from their days in the dome to Robertson Stadium to their current new digs. We’ve had season tickets, when budgets allowed, for us and our wives, for us and a large group of friends, and now just us. We’ve traveled to away games and bowl games all around the country, sometimes with our wives, sometimes with friends, and sometimes by ourselves. We’re guys who like to watch football because it’s our school and we’re true.

We have no idea what to expect today. We’re realists like that. Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. We know it’s a long season, the game isn’t over until the final whistle, and no one is perfect. We’re fair armchair quarterbacks and we’re pretty sure, if given the chance, we could call a great game as offensive coordinators or maybe even defense in some situations. But no one has asked so we just buy our tickets and holler like hell, and have a celebratory quaff of whiskey when we score.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale