I was going to watch Obama's speech last night, so I turned on the teevee and sat on the couch, and in five minutes I was soundly asleep. So there's how I feel about politics.

In a similar fashion, football games put me to sleep. The crowd noise in the background is sort of a white noise that I find very relaxing. I spent many a Saturday in college sleeping on the couch with the tv tuned to some random football game.

There wasn't a time in my life when I was interested in football. In high school, I went to the games to socialize and never paid attention to what was happening on the field.

So I'm baffled at the mass attraction to football that occurs every fall in this state. Nobody here is interested in the sport of curling and probably the same percentage of people who live here who have not physically participated in curling have also not played football. That would be about 99%. And about half of that number never went to college.

I'm only interested in sports that I have played myself. I can watch tennis matches because I played tennis for many years. Cycling is pretty boring for most people, but because I have done some amateur racing, I have a better understanding of what is going on during a professional race. So watching cycling on tv is interesting to me, but I don't go around chastising people for their lack of interest in the sport, and I don't put "Team CSC", "Rock Racing" or "Team Astana" magnets all over my car's exterior and flags hanging out my car windows or wear a Lance Armstrong t-shirt to work on a special day marked just for the occasion.

If people are just looking for an excuse to get together, I can think of some that don't involve football. How about, "To chat with one another", "To play card or board games", "To have dinner and drinks", "To have a picnic in the park", "So our children can play together". That wasn't hard. I could think of a hundred more in a few minutes. Football... not necessary.