Hopelessly Devoted

When the movie Grease came out in 1978, I fell in love with it. Except for one song: Olivia Newton-John's sappy swimming pool lament, "Hopelessly devoted to you."

Yet that's what I'm singing this week.

The 49er-Viking game was not telecast here, but I was watching its progress online after the Packer game concluded. I was so excited to see that the 49ers were ahead and had the ball late in the 4th quarter.

As I watched the numbers changing on the NFL.com web site, however, I saw San Fransisco run three fruitless downs and punt, while the game clock moved hardly at all. Then it was Minnesota's turn. A sense of foreboding overtook me.

I watched the reports of subsequent plays with alternating emotions, until it came down to what promised to be the last play, and I saw that the Vikings were still more than 30 yards out. My arms were poised, ready to go up in a gesture of victory when Minnesota's last-ditch effort came up with the predictable incomplete or intercepted Hail Mary.

Then the score changed. Ugh!!

Just watching the numbers change online, I was thoroughly a Packers fan, and so I was really irritated by the end result.

But then, later, I saw the play shown (again and again!) on TV, and something inside me felt different. I still hated to see the Vikings win, of course, but there was something so familiar, so happy, so nostalgic about the scene, about watching Brett do it.

Oh my, I have a hard time rooting against him!

After so many years of pinning my football hopes on the aging quarterback, the ageless boy, one-of-a-kind iron man, the maddening gunslinger, I find it hard just to flip the switch. My conditioned reflex is to cheer for the guy. I fear that something Pavlovian within me will cheer when he does something heroic against the Packers next Monday Night. I fear that some wiring within me will short-circuit, and my football fan fuse will blow.