Am I watching too much football?

Sampson County saw some really good football this weekend, and so did I. My weekend full of football started Thursday night, which it usually does with the NFL’s Thursday night football. This time, however, I was on the sidelines for a Clinton game as they had their home matchup against Whiteville pushed up a day because of some nasty weather this area was forecasted to experience.

From there, I went to what the sports editor at the Sampson Independent, A.K.A. me, dubbed as the “Game of the Year” for Sampson County, which was — as I called it — a shootout between Midway and Lakewood in Barrett Sloan’s return to the Roseboro-Salemburg area. But before I watched either of those games, I was also boots-on-the-ground for Clinton’s home soccer game Thursday night as well.

That means in a two-day span, I watched three games. Granted, I couldn’t stay for the full soccer matchup against Croatan, but I was able to catch the only goal of the game on my way out. Needless to say, I was a busy man in the latter part of last week.

After the Clinton football game, I made the trek home, which is about an hour, and caught the second half of the Dolphins-Bills TNF matchup, which saw Damar Hamlin knock Tua Tagovailoa out of the game late with a concussion, in an ironic twist of fate. James Cook had three rushing touchdowns for the Bills and, to be frank, I’m glad I wasn’t playing against him in fantasy football.

Once I got my three in-person games out of the way, including writing the Game of the Week story in the parking lot on Friday night, after a thriller at Lakewood, I knew that I had the weekend to unwind just a bit and do as I pleased, before getting back into the mix of things this week.

What did I choose to do on two days off? Watch football, of course. And I’m glad I did.

Saturday saw me getting up far too early after getting home late Friday night, thanks to my daughter — but I couldn’t be mad at her, she hadn’t seen me in a couple of days due to my schedule.

While we got up and around, ready to clean the house in preparation for my father coming to visit this week as a late birthday present for her, I made her a deal. If we could watch college football all day long, we would start our day watching something we could both enjoy while we cleaned: Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift “highlights”.

I don’t know where her love for T-Swift came from, but I’m not even mad about if that means I get to bond with my baby girl over the sport I love. So, that’s what we did. We watched great plays, touchdown dances, and celebrations from America’s couple. I tried to interject with my vast football knowledge, but I highly doubt my six-year-old truly cared about the Bills playing a Cover-1 against one of the greatest passing offenses the game has ever seen. She also did not care about Kansas City getting linebackers to bite and crash via the run, just to throw the ball over the back of the defense on a play action. But what she did care about was spending time with Daddy, and that’s what I cared about, too.

We finally switched to Pat McAfee and the rest of the ESPN College Game Day crew doing their pre-game show from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where we saw a college kid miss a field goal with money on the line — a theme that persisted through the Gamecocks’ day.

And alas, another week of college football kicked off, and I had my daughter right there, on my lap, watching with me. I expected her to not pay attention much, getting antsy, wanting snacks — normal kid stuff. What I didn’t expect was her to pay so much attention to the games that she quoted a commercial, saying “You can’t have football without the snacks, Daddy.”

We watched football, off-and-on, for 12 hours. She might have watched a little less, due to playing with dolls and falling asleep early, but nonetheless, she watched. She even predicted the outcome of two games — South Carolina missing the game-tying field goal as time expired to lose to LSU, and Pittsburgh mounting a comeback, down by 10 with less than four minutes to go.

Sunday saw the same thing; I watched the pregame as we picked up toys and swept while she watched the first episodes of the Flintstones. We talked about who the best players of the day were going to be as I applauded her for her two “wins” the day before. Once 1 o’clock rolled around, though, we were right back at it, watching NFL Redzone and catching all of the action. I finally turned the SNF game off at halftime, as I knew the story that was unfolding, and she was long asleep.

I give you that entire recap to ask you this: am I watching too much football? Five days a week, I am watching teams battle it out on the gridiron. From there, I listen to podcasts that recap the games, and I catch highlights of the games I’ve already watched. I follow storylines, I know who the playmakers are, I even watch in-depth analysis.

For what? I don’t know — I’m a mediocre fantasy football player and I don’t really gamble. I guess it’s because this is the sport I’ve always loved and will continue to do so. And now, Sampson County gives me even more football to watch, and for that, I’m thankful.