First Pro Football Game

I took my son to his first professional football game this weekend. My wife was sent an offer for a buy one, get one free ticket to the game for Minnesota teachers and students. The offer was for two different games, but the other game is the day after the Extra Life charity event. I'm planning to stay up and play video games for 24 hours straight, so I don't think I will make it through an NFL game the next day.

This game took place on my daughter's birthday so we asked her if she wanted to go. She said no so it didn't seem like we should force her to go to a game on her birthday. So it was just me and my son. I know, bad dad. Leaving his daughter on her birthday to go to a football game. I think she was okay with it. My wife on the other hand...I'm not sure. I think she was just happy someone in the family was able to take advantage of the ticket offer.

In addition to being my son's first pro football game this was also my first game in over twenty years. To give a little perspective, the running back for the Vikings at that time was Herschel Walker.

This was one of those experiences that you would call a true father-son moment. Just an entire day with only the two of us. The Vikings also played pretty well and dominated the game. The final score was 30-7. There were some amazing plays and it was fun to see my son get so excited and get to feel like he was part of the game.

He told me on the way home that this was one of those days that he would remember for the rest of his life. Now he wants season tickets. I think we'll settle for watching the games on tv and maybe going again sometime next year. I wonder what he would have said if we would have lost the game.

Maybe it would have been another twenty years until my next game.

The deal

I didn't realize it had been so long since I have put up a blog post. I've been spending a lot of time lately on Facebook and replying to emails about the Ultimate Reset. I guess I have neglected to post. There has been a lot going on lately. I was featured as the Transformation Tuesday on the Beachbody Ultimate Reset Facebook page about a month ago. Things have kind of taken off from there so September has been a good month. If you want to check out my review of the Ultimate Reset program and see the before and after pictures that Beachbody reposted, you can find them at www.PromiseToBeFit.com.

The main thing that's going on around our house right now is football. My son is in third grade and started tackle football this year. It's been an exciting past few weeks. I wasn't sure how he would like it, but he loves it. I wouldn't consider myself all that coordinated so I didn't know what to expect going into my son's first game. The first time he touched the ball in the game he ran the kickoff back for a touchdown. I don't know where he gets it from, but it's fun to watch.

So I made a deal with my son for the last game. He wanted to practice knocking the ball away on defense so he has me throw passes away from him and he tries to deflect them. I think he just likes diving for the ball. I told him that he should practice trying to intercept the ball instead of just keeping the receiver from catching it. He should also try to stay on his feet. I told him that if he returned an interception for a touchdown that we would go out to eat wherever he wanted after the game the next day. This seemed to get him pretty excited.

Now for anyone out there saying I am bribing my kid. I am not running some kind of bounty program. I am not paying him to make tackles or hurt other kids. We were going to go out to eat anyway and I was probably going to let him pick the place no matter what.

Anyway, we were at the last play of the game. Our boys were up 30-6 and the other team had the ball. Their quarterback dropped back to pass and threw it in the direction of the field that my son was covering. He went after the ball and got the interception. Then he broke a few tackles and ran to the outside and scored. That was it. He got the interception for the touchdown on the last play of the game. Of course he had already told all of his friends about the deal so they were pretty excited.

After the game I asked where he wanted to eat and he picked a restaurant that would have the Vikings game on while we eat. You couldn't have wiped the smile off of either of our faces all afternoon.

So the moral of this story - bribe your kids. It works.