Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Houston Cougars & Seeing Red

As I watch this dance between the Houston Cougars & Southern Miss, knowing that the Cougars are the better team & do deserve this 13^th win, I am aware (without the omniscient diatribe of the sportscasters), that Southern Miss may be outplaying this very fine Cougar team.

And my heart breaks.  I pick up Marquez & read about a man who declares his love for a woman exactly "fifty one years, nine months & four days" after he first declared his devotion.

On the day of her husband's funeral.  And I think the same thing about Marquez's protagonist Florentino Ariza & the Houston Cougars:  Timing.  Timing is everything.

Coverage of the game annoys & infuriates me – even the local newscasters & sports enthusiasts seem to have forgotten that this team is not the first winning football team to come out of the University of Houston.  

 Like Florentino Ariza, the University of Houston has always been underestimated, its service to this community & its students never fully recognized.

Houston finally scores again & I think the Cougars are coming alive.  That the spirit of Bill Yeoman has left his body & invigorated them.  Yeoman, who broke a racial barrier in 1964 when he signed a black player on with a football scholarship; Yeoman, who led the Cougars to four Southwest Conference titles.

Southern Miss scores again & I think:  They want this more.  In a stadium built circa 1941, surrounded by enthusiastic fans outfitted in red & white.  Timing, I think, timing & wanting it more.

Again, Southern Miss scores & I can bear it no longer.  I return to Love in the Time of Cholera.

If I were there, in that stadium filled with red shirts, like Florentino Ariza, I would have stayed until the bitter end.  

But I am not there & I take up my book & look to Marquez to give me hope that love & wanting it more, can survive any time.

12 & 1 ain't bad.