Despite my attempts to the contrary, I can find no conclusive proof that these blog entries have any effect other than rearranging bits in what must be, probably is, computer servers out there somewhere.

Therefore, I am, as I imagined in my first thoughts as an infant, truly alone.

I walk, I breathe, I speak, I listen — those activities have greater impact upon the world than these bits and bytes.

Nothing I do here influences or impacts the [American] football coaches of the Southeastern Conference college teams so nothing I write in this space would cause them to want to make comments about the level of competition that the University of Tennessee coaches, trainers, staff, stadium/field, training facilities and players bring to the SEC.

They alone have to defend their job perks/pay scales and physical abuse of young men in order to instill teamwork and self-sacrifice into “student-athletes” aligned with the much-maligned NCAA just so universities can virtually destroy a few student-athletes in the name of commerce, yet claim it’s all about educational opportunities.

My habits are the result of my place in a tiny subculture in this great galaxy of ours — I do not qualify them with labels like “good” or “bad.”

For, you see, I have my own personal secret to success that prevents me from S everyday — I am waiting to die and every day until I die is a bonus I didn’t have when I contemplated S the day before — the only friend of mine when considering the big S is procrastination — there will always be time tomorrow to say hello to S and goodbye to the rest.

I never have been a very good team player.  I blame my parents, who brought a rival for their affection into this world — my sister — and I’ve been in a personal war against the world ever since.

From then on, it’s been a mental struggle to tell myself that the opposite sex is one part of two-gender trait of our species (to be honest, I’m still uncomfortable including LGBTXYZ in my universal view), that we should work together to make this planet a better place to live, etc.

I am an uptight dude, who never has felt comfortable relaxing in front of others, constantly switching personality masks to accommodate and please people around me so I can wall/fence them off from the parallel universe inside my thoughts, where I truly live, happy in my private misery and/or miserable in my private happiness.

Men are not my rivals — everything about them is some part of me, and they are what they are in their hairy, testosterone-driven imperfections.

Women are my rivals and always will be — there will never be a time when I can get back to those happy moments with my parents before my sister was conceived — whatever women do, I will compete against them; when they’re better than me at some task/skill, I will feel an immense jealousy/envy with which I will either find strength and choose to compete or feel deflated and concede defeat.

Before my wife and I followed in my parents’ footsteps and bought season tickets for Univ. of TN football home games in 1991, we enjoyed weekend getaways to B&Bs around the country.

If the exploitative college football system didn’t exist, my wife and I would probably be traveling the world.

Instead, I have driven us six or seven times in the autumn of the year back to our parents’ places in order to schedule family time around trips to Neyland Stadium.

A week ago, my wife and I decided to change seats in the stadium, giving up our South End Zone, upper deck spots in Section LL, Row 9, Seats 14-15, that we have held since 1991, in order to move to the North End Zone upper deck, our “Annual Fund” (formerly the Volunteer Athletic Scholarship Fund) donation level staying the same.

We also took advantage of buying four tickets to the “away” game in Tuscaloosa for this year’s UT-Bama game, traditionally held on the third Saturday in October.

I have no idea who the players are or will be for either team but I’m pretty sure that they’ll be in the 17-23 year old age range, the youngest players being a third my age, remembered for decades by kids who’ll attend the games and cheer for their favourite players just like when I was a kid and cheered for the likes of Condredge Holloway, a young man from Huntsville, Alabama, who ended up playing quarterback for University of Tennessee because the University of Alabama head football coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant, told Condredge that he’d never be a quarterback for Bama because his skin was the wrong colour for the times.   Probably still is in the heart of Dixie.

Doesn’t matter to me how many national championship trophies that the University of Alabama football team claims to have because I’ll always remember a fellow male, George Wallace, standing on the university campus barring people with dark skin from attending classes.

How many national championship caliber quarterbacks for Bama have not been white?

When will the first national championship college football team have a woman on the first team, let alone at quarterback?

These are questions I can wait until the day I die to see answered outside of this blog because I’ve already seen them played out in the parallel universe of my thoughts.

In a few months, I’ll watch traditional male-dominated football teams hold a controlled fight/wrestling match while women and men cheer on the sideline, knowing, despite increased ticket prices and major stadium seating capacity upgrades, nothing has changed in 50 years:

I’m still a set of states of energy alone in my thoughts, committed to my marriage and my family, but otherwise not much of a team player when I don’t want to be, never that happy-but-apprehensive-of-the-big-wide-world one-year old ever again.