Flavor of Fall

SEC SEC SEC SEC 

Bubba here is far, far from an athlete or even a truly knowledgeable fan of any sport, but nothing else adds to life the fall flavor of college football season. Even nearly six decades on, I can still feel the satisfaction -- the chilly charge in the air as a convertible loaded with Miami fans sped down University Avenue cheering and shouting minutes after they had beat us 7-20 in Florida Field, the Gators‘ final game of the season and my final game in Gainesville forever -- I can still taste the bitter flavor as they zipped by us, my satisfaction in shouting, “Yankee, go home.” 

Linda shamed me on the spot, but -- Saturday afternoon, December 1, 1956. Gainesville, Florida -- my final moment of college football. 

Exactly a year later, I was in the U. S. Naval Hospital, Newport, Rhode Island, undergoing a month or six weeks of rigorous pre-commissioning physical examination of my heart murmur. My OCS class had already been commissioned Ensign, USNR and I was anxious to get started in whatever life had in store. Still tasting the bitter flavor of iodine injected into my veins and surfacing in my mouth moments later, I was sworn in as the Navy’s newest ensign by the Chief of Cardiology, a Navy captain who had just signed my medical record, “systolic murmur, asymptomatic, NCD.” No Cause for Disqualification, raise your right hand, congratulations, Ensign Weller, and we were on our way home for Christmas, to tell our parents that they would be grandparents in June. 

The heart murmur took fifty-five years to reassert control of my life, but it’s been repaired once and for all, and here I am ready for the flavor of fall. Go Navy.

Today NCAA will make its decision affecting all three of my favorite CFB teams, Florida, Michigan, South Carolina. Not to mention whoever is playing Ohio State and the Seminoles. How do I feel about it? CFB is not the sport it was sixty years ago anyway, so if today's players, already quasi-professional, can be treated better, go for it. 

TW