My kids aren’t big fans of the NFL.\u00a0We never watch games together, and rarely talk about which teams are doing better. They know that I’m a Steelers fan, but that’s about it.<\/p>\n
These past few weeks, however, it was impossible for them to miss hearing about\u00a0the Patriots deflating their footballs. A little online research revealed\u00a0that the Patriots have a history of cheating, and suddenly my kids\u00a0were extremely interested in watching the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
They know kids who act just like the Patriots, and it drives them crazy.<\/p>\n
So we had our first family Superbowl party. We stocked up on chips and shrimp and pizza pockets. I made butter beer, and my wife made chocolate chili.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t long before the Seahawks handed off to Marshawn Lynch.<\/p>\n
“Count the tacklers,” I said. “Watch the replay.”<\/p>\n
The boys counted up to five.<\/p>\n
“That guy’s strong!” my oldest son exclaimed.<\/p>\n
“That’s what they call Beast Mode,” I answered. “The dude just doesn’t go down.”<\/p>\n
For the rest of the game, every time Marshawn was handed the ball, the boys shouted out the count of tacklers he carried with him.<\/p>\n
At the end of the game, the Seahawks were down by four points and had the ball on the Patriots 1 yard line. There was less than a minute left.\u00a0They had four downs to go one\u00a0yard.<\/p>\n
“Beast Mode time”\u00a0my oldest son said.<\/p>\n
“Beast Mode left, Beast Mode right, Beast Mode middle,” his little brother agreed.<\/p>\n
“They can’t\u00a0keep him from going one\u00a0yards.”<\/p>\n
“Nobody can keep him from going one\u00a0yards.”<\/p>\n
The Seahawks lined up, hiked the ball, and threw an interception. Game over. Patriots win.<\/p>\n
“What!?!” my son shouted at the television. “You threw it?”<\/p>\n
“I can’t believe it,”\u00a0his brother said. “They threw it. Why would they throw it?”<\/p>\n
Both of them looked at me, but I had nothing. On television, Chris Collinsworth was saying “I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with that play. What were they thinking?”<\/p>\n
The boys were livid.<\/p>\n
“AAAHHHH!!”<\/p>\n
“That coach needs to be fired.”<\/p>\n
“How could they do that?”<\/p>\n
“Time for bed,” I said.<\/p>\n
“What?!”<\/p>\n
“Sorry, but that’s football. Sometimes, they\u00a0win. Sometimes, they throw away the most important game of the year with the dumbest play call in history. There’s nothing we can do.”<\/p>\n
“AAAAHHHHH!”<\/p>\n
I understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Superbowl, through the eyes of 10 and 12 year-olds. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[118,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-Ev","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}