Sports is a metaphor for a good life. You can have fun but you can still be disappointed. You can still get hurt. You’re not guaranteed to win, but you can look in the mirror and say, “I gave it my best.” It’s about how you play the game, or at least that you didn’t break too many rules, make too many fouls, along the way, or that you at least broke the right ones.

Most sports are built on teams, though we love to focus on the individual. We remember the guy who makes the run for the touchdown, the catch over the shoulder, or who bends it into the corner, but we rarely recall the dude that made the critical block to get him there, or the pass, or the assist. It’s always the team that makes the person excel. Is it Brady or is it the Patriots? Was it the ‘76 Cincinnati Reds or just Pete Rose or Joe Morgan or Johnny Bench? Was it Michael Jordan, or was it the Zen Master or Pippin or the rest of the Bulls?

I view life more as a team sport, that we’re all in this together. Great things happen when we have goals, when we overcome struggles and mistakes, when we pick each other up. There’s really no such thing as a self-made man. It’s all some outcome of teamwork. We write more of individual accomplishments, but behind every quarterback, every number one, CEO, superstar, or tycoon, is some parent, teacher, coach, or reliable system; some dreamer, scientist, or engineer that first broke the ground.

I’ve been involved in sports all my life, and I’ve been going to at least one football game a year in Jacksonville. My sons love this. They love the action, the spectacle, everything. We meet up with friend of mine, let’s call him John. John and I met in college at the University of North Florida. He’s a local. Lives and breathes DUUU-VVAAALLLL (for the uninitiated, the Duval County chant is heard constantly during game day).

John is a die-hard fan, a season ticket holder since day one of the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL expansion in 1995. His tickets are good, maybe a third of the way up and leaning a bit toward one end of the field than the other. His parking lot pass for tailgating is exceptional. Over thirty years, John and his crew have crept closer and closer to the stadium until now we’re in a parking lot facing the main entrance. It’s pretty sweet.

In fatherhood, sport is enjoyable but on a different level. I get the most enjoyment when my kids enjoy it. I could attend myself, but it wouldn’t be the same. My 20 year old son and I went to this last week’s game, the first Monday night football game for Jacksonville since the year 2011. It was supposed to be an “easy” win, facing a Cincinnati Bengals teams without quarterback Joe Burrow, who suffered an injury to his arm.

The day is perfect, a bit overcast, a few breezes, cool. John and his posse of tailgaters are old high school teammates, almost like three brothers. Married with kids, careers, retired or mostly, but always time to get together, eat good, drink well, and tell stories. The main feast for the day is a low boil with shrimp, sausage, potatoes, corn, and old bay spice. On the side is layered dip, chips, more sausage, chicken wings, and drink concoctions that includes a carved-out pumpkin holding apple cider. The sausage is from Azar’s, a local business since 1954. My sons always ask whether the sausage will be there. It’s that good.

Stadium staff arrive about the same time that tailgating begins. They are bused into work, one yellow bus after the other, I assume to keep the parking lots open for ticketholders and tailgating. The buses arrive about every eight minutes. They are full. Hundreds of employees. Ticket takers, security, cooks, janitors, vendors. It is roughly four hours before game time and this place becomes a city within a city.

Professional sports is big money, and I hope these workers get some of it. It’ll be busy. The last game I was at, it rained and we hunkered inside the stadium with everyone else to wait it out. I talked to a beer vendor who was a PE teacher in Orlando during the week. He traveled to Jacksonville on the weekends and said between an hourly wage and tips, he could make a few hundred bucks. Plus, he enjoyed being in the atmosphere of the game.

The stadium and fields and lots around it are big, but there are even bigger plans for this area. Duval County, Florida, is proposing a massive project to rebuild the football stadium and the area around it. Plans call for a retractable roof and a mixed-use district with hotels, restaurants, shops, and offices. Though the downtown appears to be growing as it is, the pitch is the new stadium and surrounding development would attract major events and boost the local economy even more. Thinking back to those workers, the project is expected to create thousands of jobs during construction and operation.

Of course the kicker is always the cost. All it takes is money. The project is estimated to cost over $2 billion, and the initiative is to ask the public to fund it.

We shall see.

These types of public investments are a bit of a mixed bag for public returns. There’s rent and property taxes. Usually some displacement. Will the workers make a bit more than before? I wonder how season ticket holders will make out. I don’t see a billion-dollar project resulting in affordable ticket prices. It is possible that some current ticket holders will be priced out and some fans never make it to another game because of cost. And then there’s the decade’s long effort to get a tailgating location close to the stadium? Will that receive a hard reset for longtime supporters?

Tailgating is part of the football experience. It’s an opportunity, a ready made excuse to get together. It leaves plenty of time for rest and relaxation. I find a seat and a beer and stay out of the way. John is a renaissance man but he’s also a creature of habit. Everything has a place and a set time. The back of his truck is packed like a tetris game. Each piece for the day slides out. He sets up the boiler, the grill, the table, places the corn hole boards to regulation distance, and even covers the table with a new Jaguars tablecloth (an impulse buy he says). The big cooler is set by a tree along with two water jugs.

Every time the wind picks up, I smell burnt coffee. That has long been a downtown aroma for Jacksonville. Maxwell House has been here for a century. Some places have their own unique aromas of fish, flowers, garbage, baking bread, or diesel. I like coffee. This is okay. Jacksonville’s plant has survived to become the last remaining Maxwell House plant in the U.S. They employ hundreds of local workers, and like the Jaguars, generate millions in yearly economic impact for the city. That’s what I would call good to the last drop.

John gets his little boombox going and finally takes a seat in one of the foldout chairs. He drinks a cold bottle of Miller beer, union brewed and American made. He and his friends speak a language built over decades, salty and sprinkled with curse words, codes and body languages for things to leave unsaid, laughter to fill in the blanks. My sons and I used to be the interlopers. We’re accepted now. I listen to these men talk and realize they are just boys trapped in the bodies of old men. Maybe we all are. It’s a real brotherhood of hard knocks and memorable experiences. They cut each other off without a thought, disagree over bullshit, but they love each other.

The Jumbo Shrimp Stadium across the street is closed but the bathrooms are usually open. That’s an extra perk for this particular tailgate location, or else we head to the corner row of porta potties. Except there’s a problem. This time the baseball stadium is locked up for construction. But John will not have it. He spots stadium workers nearby. Still holding the tongs that turned the sausages on the grill, he saunters after them. We can’t hear anything, but John is animated and with every point, the tongs swipe through the air.

John succeeds.

There’s no living with him now. Security opens the lock to the bathrooms. He comes back, clapping his tongs like a crab’s claw, smiling like a cheshire cat. But the victory is short-lived. There’s no electricity. The lawyers have won. Interest in not being liable for someone falling while peeing in the dark, the gate and the bathrooms are locked back up, and we must follow the masses to the corner stalls.

Bitter Sweet Symphony plays on the portable boombox. Then there’s the Beatles, Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, George Harrison. An eclectic gameday mix. We drink beer, play cornhole, and spectate with other fans. The area has filled up. There’s a buzz of noise, but it’s all in peace. There’s nothing aggressive. Bengal and Jaguar fans mix. Food and drink is shared.

Food has always been the center of peace and thanksgiving, or even preparing for battle. A last good meal. Breaking bread together. I look over at my son and am happy for his experience here. I think our self-centeredness crests at parenthood. Then we know it’s not our own life anymore. We end where they begin. We are never as important to ourselves or the world once they come along. As it should be.

The stadium is our modern coliseum, our thunderdome, where heroes go to do battle, and we pay to watch. We are closer to the Romans, the Aztecs, the Native Americans, than we think. It’s a spectacle. Lights, camera, action! For four quarters, we yell, scream, swear, drink, laugh, wonder, worry, eat, and then repeat. We escape our routines. We empty our wallets. We make memories.

In the end, the home team loses. Despite Joe Burrow not being available, the Bengals came to play. The backup quarterback rises to the occasion. Big plays are made. The Bengals team left it on the field, and they left with the win.

When games are won, the stadium empties slowly. There’s chanting, laughing. The parking lots stay active. Not tonight. It’s quiet. The sting of defeat makes everyone ready to go home. Renaissance John, usually one for hanging out, is ready to go. Ready to move on. There’s work tomorrow. Back to reality. No more games. No more sport. We didn’t play, but we share the mental pain. That’s the bond.

Until next Sunday.

When I read reports like this strike on Jupiter, it reminds me of how infinitely small we are in the universe, how brilliant we are when we put our minds to it, and how little we really know. There is more of life that is a mystery than not. Humans have been looking in awe and wonder at the sky as long as we have existed. What we see has been recorded ever since we figured out how to write, draw, and paint. I imagine when an eclipse occurred, a comet was visible, a meteor struck, shooting stars, these kinds of things most likely spurred thinking and consciousness forward as well as a bit of freaking out, and it led to geoglyphs and other creations only seen from the sky, great stone figures being pushed up, pyramids, religious thought, even cults. We will continue to learn and see more and see deeper as technology, engineering, and science advance.

Whatever is out there, whatever is down here, is in us. We didn’t just show up. We are the universe. As Carl Sagan and others have said, we truly are made of “star stuff.”

Never stop wondering. Never stop being curious.

And Now….

A few words to share on the way out the door

Hope to see you next time. Keep reading always, build trust as much as you can with whomever you can, recognize the many teams you are on and do your part, and remember: Be a good human.