Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Don’t do that to me…

My wife and I are football fans. More specifically, we’re Seattle Seahawk fans. We used to hold season tickets back when the team played in the old concrete hamburger known as the King Dome, and while they played at Husky Stadium, and for the first season in the new stadium. Then we dropped the tickets because they kept getting more expensive and the quality of the play kept getting worse.

It took a long time for us to lose our disenchantment with the team, but we were outraged at the officiating in February of 2005. The Seahawks have given us a bumpy ride, including one of the worst seasons I can remember last year, but we’re still fans. We just stick to watching them on television or listening to the games on the radio. We don’t even keep track of the schedule anymore until the last minute.

For some reason, we were under the impression that today’s game against Chicago was in Chicago and that the game would be played in the morning (Pacific time). So as we set up to watch the game in a bit of a groggy state (hey, it’s the weekend, and I sleep in), we were disappointed to learn that the game was actually in the afternoon. Well, only a little disappointed. After all, we are still going to eventually move east to Tennessee, and the Titans are playing the Jets in New York this morning.

At least, that’s what we thought. We turned the television to the Titans game and settled down with a cup of coffee and bleary eyes. When enough of that precious liquid had flowed down our throats for my eyes to focus properly confusion set in. For a moment I thought my color perception had somehow been altered. The blue of the Titans’ uniforms was pastel. The green of the Jets’ uniforms had gone brown.

A closer look revealed that the Houston Oilers were on the field, playing against a team that looked like the Cleveland Browns. The labels on the screen definitely said Tennessee and New York though, and the commentators were talking about players from those teams. When a player made a play, the name on the uniform matched the name given by the announcer, but the uniform was totally off.

What the heck?

In vain, we searched for an explanation, until I came upstairs to check out the game description on the Web. Apparently the NFL is celebrating the 50th season of the American Football League, merged into the NFL as the American Football Conference in 1970. Today’s game is one of sixteen AFL “Legacy Games” and the teams are playing as the Houston Oilers and the New York Titans.

Well, it’s not so confusing now that I know what’s going on, but it was a shock and total chaos for a few minutes in the Nelson household as we tried to figure it out. This is what I get for not paying attention.