04-11-2002, 10:47 AM
Football, in a dozen ways. The feeling you get twenty minutes before kickoff as you're warming up, staring at members of the opposing team. The 20 seconds before kickoff, when you are this raging festering ball of adrenaline, anxious to hurtle your body down the field and decimate the first person you find. The sound of pads colliding and bodies slamming into the frozen turf. The feeling you get when you run the ball and a defender lines you up in his sights, sure to bring you down, until you run him over and leave him wallowing in the dirt. The feeling of cold mud caked onto your skin, mixed with the warm sweat, and if you're lucky, blood trickiling down your arm. The anguished cries of pain from the bottom of a pile. The emmotional surge felt after a score. The feeling of victory as you leave the field a celebrated warrior. The stiffness and pain the day after, when you can barely walk and lifting your arms to your mouth to eat becomes a chore, but you remember how you got so sore, and it all seems worthwhile.