My loyalty is divided.

I went to college many moons ago (I won't tell you how many, but let's just say it's more than our wolf brothers see) at a women's college in Pennsylvania with about 1200 students. I completely missed out on the college football aspect of my experience. So I'm trying to make up for it by supporting my kids' college teams.

So far, two kids have graduated from James Madison University, where the first thing they teach new parents is not where the business office is, but the JMU cheer (J! M! U! J! M! U! J! M! U! Duuuuuuuuuuuuuukes!). They are serious about their football. Not serious enough to actually win a bunch of championships, or even contend most years, but they do have some crazy fans and an occasional televised game.

Now, Abbie is at Liberty U, just down the road a few hours from JMU. And today is the day the two meet. The trash talking is burning up some serious text message counters around here. Before Abbie was even an actual student there, she was wearing an LU T-shirt out in town one day, and some kid asked her if she went there. She said yes, and he told her he went to JMU and that they would play each other in football. Abbie leaned in, pointed her finger at his chest, and growled in her best intimidating voice, "You're goin' down!" What is it about college that brings out the competitor in them?

Anyway, last week I was in the kitchen with Leah and Mike (the JMU grads) before they left for work one day, and we were discussing the impending match-up. Leah said, "JMU better win or we'll never hear the end of it."

Then this morning, Abbie called and said the JMU fans had been emailing LU fans all week talking smack and telling them they were going to storm the stadium and take up all the LU seats. They even had a contingent camping outside the stadium last night. But Abbie's not worried. At Friday's convocation, the song leader announced that LU security was going to secretly open the back gates of the stadium two hours early so LU fans could fill ALL the seats. How awesome is that? I don't know how they're going to sneak 12,000 students in the back gate, but college students can get pretty creative.

I was still chuckling about it when Mike walked in the kitchen, so I told him the story. He immediately got that look . . . the look that says, "Hey, if I call my friends (JMU fans) right
now . . ."

So I said, "DO NOT under any circumstances call even ONE of your friends."

I'm secretly pulling for LU, even though, at this point, JMU has a significant portion of my retirement fund. LU is definitely the underdog here. Let's hope the Flames don't get rained out.

Be thankful ~

Karen

Edited Sunday morning: The Flames got rained out. They put up a good fight until the second half, when they gave up two TDs. Of course, in their defense we should add that the two teams are in different conferences, so technically, they're not supposed to play each other, but they did OK.