How Kaepernick Helped Bring Football — and My Mom — Back Home

There’s a running joke in my family that if you give me the back story on an athlete, you can get me to watch any sporting event. It’s how my husband, Tenzin, got me to watch mixed martial arts. Show me a 3-minute package on a guy who grew up in the slums of Rio de Janeiro or raised his younger siblings after his parents died and I’ll be screaming at the television for him to pummel the hell out of some other poor bastard.

I get this from my mother. She was a sports fanatic who could even make it exciting to watch golf. Or curling. I grew up knowing every football and baseball team not just because I hung out with all the boys on my street but because my mother’s side of the family were rabid Chicago Bears and Cubs fans. So it was mandatory.

As an adult, I kept up with football in part because my mom let me know what was happening. Tenzin and I didn’t turn out to be “sit around and watch football all day on Sunday” people, but we knew the particulars. Just to give you some perspective, we watched Monday Night Football in the hospital while I was in labor with my first baby (Oakland vs. Denver).

I can still remember my mom tossing pitch after pitch to my 3-year-old son, Newt, while he tried to whack the ball with his giant, red, wiffle ball bat. And sitting on the couch with him when he was around six and explaining what was happening during a basketball game. And holding the kids while they watched horse racing (she died just a few months later).

Since she’s been gone, our house has become strangely light on organized sports. We don’t watch anything (besides some MMA — it’s how Tenzin unwinds after work late at night). We don’t go to games. Newt played soccer for a couple of years but ended up not liking it that much. I guess putting hours and hours into watching games felt like a time sink. So we just…let it go.

I’ve never really cared too much until recently when it became clear that my daughter, Elfie, couldn’t tell a baseball from a football. So I decided it was probably time to learn some stuff.

This all came on the heels of some craziness in my city — Kaepernick fever. First of all, there are a lot of 49er fans around here because San Francisco is the closest team to Reno. And Colin Kaepernick? He’s from the University of Nevada, Reno. So people are going bonkers.

Like I said, I’m a sucker for a good story, so I couldn’t help but get a little swept up in the hype. Especially after it turned out the guy was adopted…and wrote down his dreams (that came true) in a 4th-grade essay…and helps kids with heart defects…I mean, come on.

It all got to the point where I started thinking I’d better get the kids up to speed on this stuff. Otherwise they’d be the weirdos at school who thought “Kaepernicking” was some sort of archeological term. Or they’d run into one of those jackass adults who always felt the need to give kids — boys — a hard time for not knowing “manly” things like football statistics.

So two weeks ago, I flipped on the TV, and we watched the San Francisco/Atlanta playoff game (nice first choice — now they think football’s always exciting). And today, we’ll do it again. The kids will probably be more interested in the Super Bowl commercials (some of which will make me palm smack my forehead for society). We’ll possibly even do some biceps kissing (but only because he’s one of ours — I kind of hate that crap). And I’ll be correcting Elfie on her consistent use of the terms “basket” and “home run” to describe a touchdown.

But the best part is that a little piece of my mom will be back in the house with us.

And we’ll be eating some Lays potato chips and yelling extra loudly at the television, just to make her proud.