Not today. Nope, not today. This morning I was wide awake when it was still dark out. And I was also, you know, not in my own apartment. I looked over at the shiny hotel alarm clock just after I had woken up, and saw that it wasn’t even considering going off for another almost three hours. I preferred my own alarm clock at home - I’d had it since I was seven, and each and every one of the random sounds it put out was near and dear to me.
Why was today different from any other day, besides being in a hotel rather than my own place? Was it my first day on the job? Nope, that was last week, and even last week waking up three hours early was a little much. Nah, last week I’d greeted my alarm clock’s steady but piercing drone after thirty minutes of tossing and turning in bed. My first day at work last week, with all the trials and tribulations that firsts like that always brought, was a cakewalk compared to what today was gonna be like, I could already tell.
For today, today was draft day. Yeah, that’s right, draft day. The biggest day of the year for football fans the world over. No, not the Kevin Costner movie no one saw. The real thing. The day when the fortunes of each of the 32 professional football teams changed forever.
And it happened once a year! Literally christmas for football fans. The league had moved the draft back to May, from its original place in April, probably to get out from under the shadow of the basketball playoffs. One thing the league was good at was figuring out the right timing for things. Football had become a year round sport, despite real games only being played in September through the first weekend of February.
People talked about it endlessly. Water coolers around the world were hubs for football talk, strategies, exultations and anger. Of course, that was before the internet showed up and gave people an entirely new place to argue about football in between sharing selfies and watching porn.
It was a wonderful time to be alive.
And for me, it was a wonderful time to finally finish my journalism degree and get out into the world, ready to cover whatever they threw at me.
And just my luck, I’d gotten my dream job assignment as beat reporter for the Boston Globe, covering the New England Patriots. It wasn’t every day that you got to write about your favorite team growing up for a living!
I’d been pinching myself every hour or so since I’d gotten the news last month. The Patriots! Of all the teams to cover, I got to stay in Massachusetts and follow the team around the country?
Dream job right here. I still couldn’t believe that I had gotten it over all the other people that definitely wanted it. I mean, I had a great background in journalism, and I’d written about sports all through college, but I didn’t have nearly as much real world experience as I’m sure other applicants had. I still didn’t know quite what had gotten me the job over them, but so far I hadn’t found the right way to ask that question. And I wasn’t sure if I really wanted the answer.
The Patriots! As a girl from a small town in New England, they were my team, through and through. Everyone at school when I was growing up had Patriots gear, though the Celtics were a little more popular at the time. I liked basketball, but football was my first sporting love.
I couldn’t remember the number of times I’d sat with my father and watched Patriots games as a kid. He was a huge fan despite all the ups and downs the team had gone through over the years. We went to a few games, but even back then they were a little too expensive for us. Plus, it was way more fun for us to camp out in the living room and watch side by side, me on the couch and my dad in his favorite lounge chair. My mother, who wasn’t into sports at all, had always made us snacks and let us eat lunch and dinner in the living room on game days. It was a really big deal.
Those Sundays watching the Patriots with him were some of my fondest memories.
In fact, when I found out I got the Globe job covering the Patriots, I hadn’t called my friends first, hometown or college - I’d called my dad. I hadn’t told him that I was even in consideration for the gig, cause I didn’t want to get his hopes up in case I didn’t get it, but he’d been overjoyed to hear that his little girl was going to be following his favorite football team around the country. I hadn’t gotten a chance to see him since I got the job, but I couldn’t wait to.
Finally, the alarm decided to do its thing and I had no choice but to get up and start getting ready if I wanted to get to Radio City Music Hall on time. New York City! I’d arrived yesterday and promptly tired myself out walking all around, my eyes wide open and practically climbing out of my head trying to take it all in.
Of course, that was purely on the surface level. If we got a little deeper, to where sports allegiances lived, I hated New York City with a burning passion stronger than anything I’d ever felt for a boy.