by Adam Jones

Painting over it seems to be the best option when pondering red wine on your ceiling. Or I could just leave it there. For it reminds me that I have much to be thankful for. The stains are courtesy of my wife, Erin, who you all know as Mrs. Jones Top Ten. She's the kind of wife who insists I start taking a men's college football trip every fall or, when a stray ticket to a Longhorn game shows up-I am not a season-ticket holder, which I know you will all find very hard to believe, she informs me that I have to go. The accent is on "have to." She is not one who allows me an out, even when it means she stays home with our children (not that they aren't delightful, well...). A game invitation is akin to a clandestine meeting of the French Resistance during the German occupation in Paris, or at the very least evening prayer in a Trappist monastery. I have to go. It is simply part of who I am. There can be no doubt that I married the right woman and I have known this ever since she ordered a Bass Ale on our first date. I am not sure a Cosmopolitan has ever crossed her lips. Red wine is another matter, which is why she bought me a state-of-the-art corkscrew for Father's Day. It is one of those lever pull-down jobs that applies the immutable laws of physics and the general concept of the spiral to bear in accessing the fruits of the vineyard. Thank God for simple tools. When pressure is applied correctly, the cork is drawn straight out of the bottle cleanly and with little resistance. That's the upside. The downside is, on Erin's first whack at it, the pressure applied was misaligned with the contemplated task. Apply enough downward force into a wine bottle and something has to give.

by Adam Jones 

The Knights of Columbus can flat out make a steak sandwich. The smell wafting from the KOC grill amidst the wash of bagpipes and drums honoring the Gaelic muse on a perfect late summer game day on a university quad was a sensory delight that came achingly close to converting me to Notre Dame fandom, if not Catholicism altogether. I pondered this constitutional moment of the tenuous separation of church and football before reminding myself that my lifelong disdain for the Fighting Irish was rooted in their annoying belief that this university—their university—was God’s gift to college football. Problem is, beneath the golden dome and the mosaic of Jesus indicating six for the home team, I started to believe that maybe the University of Notre Dame was God’s gift to college football. It’s hard to argue that this place isn’t exactly what the Lord had in mind on Saturdays in America. Where my heart held no place for Notre Dame before today now there resides a small kernel of admiration and even love. It should come somewhat naturally; my mother was a Killian for God’s sake. But complete conversion simply isn’t in the cards. Sanity prevailed despite the best efforts of the pipe and drum corps and the Knights of Columbus. I returned safely to my Wesleyan spiritual home and my loving allegiance to Texas (the state, the university, the football team—not necessarily in that order).

by Adam Jones 

One of the great mysteries of life concerns the American habit of drinking Miller Lite by the millions of gallons while its patriarch, Miller High Life, the champagne of beers in the clear glass bottle, sits like a lonely wallflower untouched on the convenience store shelf. Have we really evolved to the point as a people where we believe abstaining from full-strength 12 ouncers will result in ourselves remaining flat-bellied and robust advertisements for a successful and content life—our inalienable rights expanded to include not only life and liberty but the pursuit of the magic capitalist elixir that remains, somehow, both great tasting and, yes, less filling? Surely we  are devolving.

by Adam Jones

Tensions are high as an argument breaks out among friends. The controversy is this: How do you contest overtime in Mattel's PRO CLASSIC 2, the early 1980's handheld electronic football game? They finally come to terms on alternating possessions and the plastic box is fired up to settle things on the "field." T.O. (no, not that one) purchased the game for two bucks at a used toy store and dropped it on the table at the bar. He might as well have thrown out several dozen bottle rockets and a cigarette lighter to a pack of ravenous 12 year-olds as to tempt a bunch of 30 and 40-something men with this perfect relic of our youth. Generation X-Box would eye us as a goat eyes a new gate if we were to try and convince them that these tiny red dashes conjured to us Montana to Rice or Walter Payton flying down the sideline. They are accustomed to fully animated and lifelike digital replicas of their heroes in full color and controlled with a flip of the thumb. Progress isn't all that it is cracked up to be (I ponder this while watching the game on the Boulevard Grill's 52-inch high definition screen). It seems like our games used to require a little more imagination.

by Adam Jones

So, what are the odds that I will contract typhoid in Guatemala? This, not the early over/under of the Papajohns.com Bowl between South Florida and East Carolina, is the dominant question of the day. Seeing as my travel over the new year to Central America has been planned for months, yet I am negligently already within the four-week preferred window for typhoid inoculation, I need to know if I will be sipping a cool drink on a forested veranda in Antigua or if I will be dying a slow and miserable death about the time that Houston and South Carolina kick off the Auto Zone Liberty Bowl.

by Adam Jones

A dad can get away with almost anything while holding an infant at a crowded Christmas party. Especially an introverted dad like myself. An infant wards off small talk; people prefer to smile warmly at the baby and keep moving. But the best part is that if you are in the food room no one expects you to politely move through the buffet with a plate. As long as you are feeding the infant a cracker and adhering to the general rules of party eating (no double dipping and if you touch it, you eat it) you can stake out a queso bowl or a boiled shrimp station for hours. Being the expert that I am, I can even manage to make a potato roll and roast beef sandwich with one hand, although I do have to forego the horseradish when holding said child. This grand scheme held me in good stead right up to the point that C tested the limits of its foolproofishness. He exposed my evil plot by wildly swinging his left hand and landing a perfect uppercut on the bottom of a glass half-full of egg nog. Egg nog in flight is pretty spectacular. Huge creamy white droplets infused with Kentucky whiskey and Jamaican rum, perfectly flecked with nutmeg and cinnamon, launch straight up, separate, hang in the air for a brief moment, descend and hit the floor with a rat-a-tat explosive burst like a milk-filled floral shell as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve.

by Adam Jones

There was quite a ruckus behind us as I eased the car onto Texas 31 on the way out of Longview. The honking started with a Tahoe and then a pick-up joined the chorus. They were trying to get my attention.

"What's going on back there?"

E looked over her left shoulder puzzled. Clarity came when she shifted in her seat and looked to the right.

"Uhm, honey, you..."

"What?"

"It's the nozzle from the gas pump. It's still attached to the car...along with the hose..."

She was correct. About eight feet of industrial strength rubber tubing was flapping along behind us, trying vainly to break free from its captivity like a trout at the end of a fly rod.

by Adam Jones

Fear the Cheese. That's what it says on the back of the brown t-shirt from Matt's at 35^th and Cedar in Minneapolis. Apparently Matt's serves up a burger bigger than your head called the "Jucy Lucy." It's all on the shirt. My t-shirt drawer defines my entire Saturday. If my guys are playing, the burnt orange shirt from The Frisco Shop on Burnet gets the call. If not, I am prone to the black Bob Dylan shirt; it reminds me that, all external evidence to the contrary, there must be some extant rebel or poet within me. Today my guys were idle, but I honored them anyway. Their long ago win over Michigan in the 2005 Rose Bowl won me the Matt's shirt. My friend D.H. and I had bet a local t-shirt on the outcome. My team had Vince Young and his team didn't. Today his team would play in a game with much higher stakes and maybe I could bring myself to cheer for the Wolverines.

by Adam Jones

Weldon "Bird Dog" Trice is one the great football players in the history of West Texas State University. He definitely had the best nickname, earned as a fleet cornerback who could track 'em down and sniff 'em out. He was in a group of Baptist men who served my family lunch the day of my grandfather's funeral. I didn't hear anything that week other than what a fine upstanding man my grandfather was, which was appreciated, but of which I was also well aware. I lost interest in these plaudits after awhile and relied on the rote responses of the grieving to get me through the conversations. Then I talked to Mr. Trice.

by Adam Jones

My sister brought me a family bible on Saturday. Just like in the Willie Nelson song. The inside front noted that my great grandmother gave it to my grandfather in 1926, long before the BCS permanently screwed up college football. There were four book marks in it and part of me wonders what Granddad Joneswas looking up in the fourth chapter of II Kings. This is where the Moabites are overrun, knocking them out of bowl contention and resulting in the son of the king being slain as a burnt offering. Talk about being fired. The bookmarks in the Gospels land on my grandfather's favorite parables, which are a tad bit more heartwarming. I'm very thankful my sister found this. But it's not the artifact I have been looking for since Granddad died in 1994.