No Red States, No Blue States, Just Football

President-elect Obama told us there are no Red States, and there are no Blue States. There are only the United States. He was 100% right, but it had nothing to do with politics. As a nation we are still divided on any number of political issues: abortion, bailouts, tax policy, the Clintons, immigration, war, gay rights, women's rights, etc, etc, etc. We do have common ground, however. It's football.

Go to Massachusetts on a crisp fall Sunday when the leaves are in full color. There, in the land of John Kerry, gay marriage, and legalized marijuana, there is only one thing that matters come Sunday afternoon - the Pats game.

Compare that to an autumn Sunday in Texas, when the weather is still as warm as a pit barbecue. There, in the land of George W. Bush, evangelicism, and oil companies, there is only one thing that matters come Sunday afternoon - the Cowboys game (or, if one was unlucky enough to be from Houston, the Texans game. Go Sage Rosenfels!)

To paraphrase Lee Greenwood [FN 1], from the lakes of Minnesota to the hills of Tennessee, across the plains of Texas, from sea to shining sea, we're proud to be American football fans.

I have a story that proves this fact.


My good friend Pipes and I went to Texas to visit our Army buddy, Bakes. Bakes was born and raised just outside Dallas, and was every inch the Great American Hero: strapping young lad, blond hair, blue eyes, high school football player, West Point graduate, Army officer, married to his high school sweetheart, and life-long Texas A&M fan. Pipes and I flew to Dallas, hopped into Bakes's ginormous pick-up truck, and drove to the heart of A&M football - Aggieland, aka College Station, Texas.

Now, I grew up in NJ, where football is certainly popular - what kind of a week people are having often depends on how well the Giants or Jets are doing. But football in Texas is something else entirely. Once you get within 60 miles of College Station, you are in Aggieland. The water towers and billboards proclaim the greatness of the Aggies. Everything from gas stations to restaurants to doctors offices is dedicated to Aggie fanaticism. Every radio and television station covers some aspect of Aggie football.

We drove into College Station, and Bakes nosed his monster truck through the throngs of maroon-clad fans that mobbed the streets. We had arrived hours before the game - in which the Aggies would face the Cornhuskers of Nebraska - and the pre-game celebrations were already in full swing. "Where to?" I asked Bakes. "We're goin' to the Dixie Chicken," Bakes said, spitting a stream of Copenhagen juice into a Coke can.

Ah, the Dixie Chicken: a cowboy football bar to beat all others. A single-story pine-board building housing hundreds of feet of bar, serving cold beer and hot wings to the hundreds of Aggie faithful that mob it each weekend.

Bakes found a nearby parking spot and our intrepid trio walked into the bar. Inside was a sea of Aggie fans in maroon and gray, interspersed with a few brave Nebraska fans. Raucous groups of fans circled around their pitchers of Bud and Shiner Bock, scarfing down nachos and wings. Solid Red-Staters all. Bakes, Pipes and I grabbed a few pitchers and found an unoccupied corner between some Aggie college kids and Nebraska alums.

We drank up, and Pipes pulled out his camera for some group shots. We passed the camera around, each of us taking pictures of the other two. We looked around to ask someone to take a picture of all three of us. Who to ask? Aggie kids? Cornhusker alums? "How about that guy?" asked Bakes.

He pointed at a tall feller standing 20th in line for the men's room. "Who, the guy in the blue rugby shirt?" I asked. "Yeah," he said.

Pipes put his beer down and said, "Hey, you know who that is?" I gave him a blank look and shrugged. "That's Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks."

For those who don't know, Mark Cuban is a multi-billionaire. He lives in a 24,000 square foot mansion just outside Dallas. Recently, he was doing the Watusi with Wayne Brady on "Don't Forget the Lyrics." But there he was, elbow to elbow with the hoi polloi, waiting his turn for the pisser, enjoying some authentic football Americana.

"Let's get a picture with him," I said. "Nah," said Pipes, "People've probably been bothering him for that all day."

"Ok," said Bakes. "Let's just ask him to take a picture of us." He grabbed the camera and tapped Cuban on the shoulder.

"Yeah," Mark Cuban asked, looking at Bakes and eying the camera. "Excuse me, sir, but would you take a picture of me and my friends?" asked Bakes, smiling widely. Mark Cuban looked at him quizzically, clearly taken aback. I think he had a "Don't you know who I am?" moment. But Bakes didn't blink (good Republican that he is, he's incapable of blinking in the face of adversity). Mark Cuban recovered his composure, smiled and said, "Sure!"

He took the camera, and Bakes stepped back and put his arms around me and Pipes. Cuban held up the camera and focused it. "A little closer, guys." We got closer. "No, cheek to cheek," he said. We got cheek to cheek. "Good. On 3. 1, 2, 3." Flash, click. "One more, just in case," Cuban said. Flash, click. "Ok guys, that's great," he said.

Bakes stepped forward and took the camera back. "Thanks a lot, sir, I really appreciate it," Bakes said. "Oh, no problem guys," said Cuban, and he turned to resume his place in line. Bakes came back over to our corner, and we noticed the dropped jaws of the Aggie kids and Husker alums around us.

"Y'all know who that was?" asked one of the Nebraska guys. "Yeah," said Pipes, "that was Mark Cuban." "Well that's about the most awesome thing I've seen," said the Nebraska guy, laughing, and he high-fived us all around.

Indeed, it was pretty awesome. It's not every day you can get the billionaire owner of a championship-caliber sports franchise to take your picture in a bar.

And even more awesome was the disparate group brought together by this little scene: Bakes, the red-blooded Texan; Pipes, the hockey kid from Minnesota, don'cha know; me, from Joisey; the Husker and Aggie fans that would be clamoring for each other's heads in the upcoming game; and one of the richest men in America who really just had to pee. But backgrounds didn't matter, because we were all united in our desire for cold beer and good football.

See, there are no Red States, and there are no Blue States. Just the United States of Football. The end.

[FN 1] Lee Greenwood pretty much has one hit, "Proud to be an American." Because this song only gets air time when America goes to war, I wonder if it bothers Lee that the amount of his royalties directly corresponds to the severity of our armed conflicts.