Ready or not, it’s football season

By Jeff Hage (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Friday, August 22, 2008

It is hard to believe that it's been nearly 10 months since the last regular season high school football game was played in Otter Tail County.

But that all changes in about a week when Osakis arrives in Battle Lake to face OTC and Swanville heads to New York Mills next Thursday for the county’s first football games of the 2008 season.

A day later football season is in full force on gridirons throughout Otter Tail County.

It’s time for Friday night lights!

No sport is more anticipated or over-analyzed than football, and flocks of fans will undoubtedly be making the ventures to an area contest of interest.

Next weekend the Fergus Falls open their season at home against Moorhead and the college with the long name — Minnesota State Community and Technical College — kicks off its season at St. Cloud State in a special season kick-off event against Mesabi.The game I’m really excited about, however, is the Vikings’ season opener on Monday, Sept. 8.

With two preseason games under our belts and the Steelers invading the Metrodome Saturday night, it’s not too soon to start planning for those famous words from Hank Williams, Jr., “Are You Ready for Some Football?”

There was some exciting off-season developments.

The Vikings acquired NFL sack leader Jared Allen just days before the draft. I’m excited to see if he can duplicated his 15.5 sacks with the Chiefs in 2007 into similar numbers for the Purple and Gold.

We didn’t have a first round draft pick because of the Allen deal, but our second round pick Tyrell Johnson, a safety from Arkansas State, has shown lots of promise.

We turned to the past in bringing back Gus Frerotte as our back-up quarterback. It looks like a good move because T-Jack — Tarvaris Jackson — has already been knocked out of the line-up with injuries.

We lived through the drama this summer of the on-again-off-again saga of Brett Farve.

Somedays it looked like he’d be a Viking, other days it was the furthest thing from the minds in the Packer front office.

They had to be concerned, though, because a poison pill was inserted into the Favre trade deal that stated any deal for Farve between the Jets and Vikings would require the Jets to give up three first-round draft picks.

I sure am. And with 16 regular season games, a bye week, a successful playoff run and hopefully a Super Bowl appearance, I can only hope that my Sunday afternoons are tied up for the next 21 weeks or so.

My wife Kathy even seems OK with the look into my football future.

When I told her recently that football season was upon us and that I’d see her in February when I come up for air after the Pro Bowl she replied, “ That’s OK, I have a library card.”