I reached for my jacket today. It was only 55 degrees. It was only 55 degrees on an Alabama gameday and I found myself reaching for a jacket and I feel like I am betraying something. They love football more than anything down here, but I feel like I’ve lost what football is. What Football Weather is.

Football Weather is four pairs of thick tube socks covering your feet. Football Weather is a thermal undershirt and a t-shirt and a long-sleeve shirt and a sweater and a hooded sweatshirt and a winter coat. Football Weather is holy shit how do I not own any gloves. Football Weather is 13 degrees Fahrenheit at kickoff. Football Weather is becoming colder by the minute.  Football Weather is stiff bodies in motion, is snorts of condensed air, is visible breath and exertion. Football Weather is just like hunting deer. Football Weather is nothing like hunting deer, is not solitary, is loud. Football Weather is an exothermic oxidized iron reaction. Football Weather is four Grabber brand hand warmers stuffed into each of my shoes. Football Weather is baked potatoes in my pockets, is finding warmth in the arm of another, is sharing nips from flasks for the sake of lungs. Football Weather is when heat desperately fights the cold. Football Weather is inevitable loss. 

Football Weather is ice-choked voices. Football Weather is an alphorn chorus. Football Weather is a frozen-spit brass section, is clogged music, is a drumline that doesn’t play rhythm so much as determination. Football Weather is standing on flimsy metal rafters, is stomping on flimsy metal rafters that tonight feel stiff, is feeling like you’ll crack strained metal, is feeling like everyone and everything is fragile. Football Weather is the deep pass that sinks heavy. Football Weather is the slippery patch in that hole that the line opened up. Football Weather is negative three windchill. Football Weather is ice crystals blown into my eyes, is the corners of my lips resisting thaw. Football Weather is shifting my weight from one foot onto the other and feeling only my ankle. Football Weather is walking in place, is forcing blood to flow, is feeling that my foot is the size of seventeen feet, is feeling that my foot is the size of zero feet. 

Football Weather is that 98-yard touchdown run into a wall of frozen drizzle. Football Weather is high fives that send jolts through my elbow. Football Weather is everyone running out onto the field, is stumbling over deadweight feet, is I literally can’t move my fingers at this point. Football Weather is each individual blade of synthetic turf as fragile as dry prairie grass, is each tiny rubber pellet marble-hard underneath me. Football Weather is a mass of hugs colored forest green or Carhartt tan. Football Weather is cracked palm handshakes with men sad Grand Rapids men in blue coats. Football Weather is hundreds of kids teeter-tottering on the goalposts, is frantic pushing and pulling, is the toppling over, is making our own accomplishment. Football Weather is lifting a downed goalpost above our heads, is marching it across campus, is hurling it into Colden Pond, is the great crack of ice. Football Weather is victory over ice. Football Weather is stubbing my toes over and over as I walk with the mass to The Palms. Football Weather is watching a chainsaw slice off individual slivers of the other goalpost, is receiving chartreuse metal like it is something sacred. Football Weather is taking two minutes to work your house key into the lock. Football Weather is lying in front of the heater, waiting and waiting for a bone-deep warmth.

Football Weather is my body remembering Missouri. 




 



Barry Grass lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he is the current Nonfiction Editor of Black Warrior Review. Recent work appears/is forthcoming in Sonora Review, Hobart, Annalemma, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among others. Send your memories, scouting reports, smack talk, and playbook discussion about Division II football to barrygrass@gmail.com.