The Fall of 2007 was the first year that I got in to football, and the team that got me interested was the New England Patriots. A friend of mine was a fan and I was curious as to what the hoopla was about, so I tuned in to the Patriots’ first game this season. I was hooked. I saw what I hadn’t seen yet – a team with precision. A team whose parts all worked together perfectly. And that made football interesting to me. Up until this year I would watch parts of perhaps 5 games per year. Nothing got me interested. I actually found the sport frustrating. And I think I’ve recently (thanks to the Patriots) realized why. To watch a team (such as the Patriots with Tom Brady as QB) is quite an exciting thing. To watch mediocrity, such as many of the other quarterbacks in the NFL, is just not fun. It’s not exciting.The Patriots won today in a landslide 52-7 victory against the Redskins. That Patriots fan once told me that “they’re all tough games”, but honestly the last two (Dallas and Washington) haven’t seemed too tough to me, and the reason is not luck or chance. It’s skill. Tom Brady leads a team that (so far, in my first football season) is light-years beyond the other teams I’ve seen, who all seem disorganized, disconnected from each other, and all-around unremarkable. So the point of this post is that in my mid thirties I am finally getting in to football – and for good reason. My only regret is that I didn’t know enough to keep an eye on the Colts games because apparently the game next week is absolutely HUGE.