How much football did you watch?

I never watched football until I was in 1st form (7th grade) at Horace Mann School. I saw they had football, so I invited some friends who were into football to watch with me. Then I still had to look up the entry in the encyclopedia to understand much of it, and then quickly it clicked and I was really into it, every chance I got. In a few years I was even listening to Albany Metro Mallers games on WGY, another minor league team out of Hartford, and trying to figure out how to get a ride to see women's games in the area; I still wasn't driving. But I was also getting into rugby via watching locally. I went thru a couple of periods of following soccer too -- actually got into that slightly ahead of football because soccer was so much easier to understand.

Before all that I thought football meant kickball, which was really a type of baseball, but then I saw a football and was confused by its shape.

My first thoughts on seeing those were, "I guess they play on Sundays because it's a Catholic school," and, "Wow, they sure get those plays off fast!"

Honestly, my mom was recording games for me when I was 6 years old…Aside from Ninja Turtles and Pro Wrestling that’s all I watched. I’ve always been a football guy. Started really learning the game when I got Tecmo Super Bowl in NES in 1992.

I grew up a football fanatic - my dad has been on a staff and around a team for as long as I've been alive, so I've spent almost every fall Friday night of my life either on the field or around coaches before and after games. When I was 7-14 years old my dad would take me back into the coach's office after games when they would re-watch the game they just played to clip it for film. On top of all that, my favorite thing to do growing up and even now was go to HS games for different schools, whether on Thursdays or Saturdays during the regular season, or throughout the playoffs. I've consumed more HS football than probably 99% of people my age, but most of that is built on my relationship with my dad.

Other than watching the Buckeyes whenever I could on Saturdays, I never watched a ton of college or NFL football until I was in college. Living in a house with 4+ other college guys means if there's a game being broadcasted, it's on the TV. That's slowed down since I got married, but I still enjoy watching replays of games, HS through NFL, on youtube, Hulu, or NFL network while I work

Just because it's on, doesn't mean they're watching it.

Also 100% true.

I'm way too ADD to watch football non stop. Hell, with as long as games are on TV, I can hardly watch 1 game start to finish without leaving to do something else.

I'm 42 but one of my best memories in life is when I was in college, our games would be 1pm kick offs, then leaving the bar later that night with my buddy and sneaking into the house across the street (our friends) to watch the Colt Brennan Hawaii games at midnight because they had an illegal satellite that got us those games. This was as the internet was really starting to become a tool, so there was still some mystique about the whole "Hawaii Throw It all the time" thing

here a coaching staff did something about it by making a cheat sheet for football IQ

I couldn’t stand to watch any sports on TV until 7th grade. That’s when i started watching football to bond with my grandfather (“papaw”—pronounced “pap”/“aw” with emphasis on first syllable) while he was dying from ALS and stuck in bed. Luckily for me, the University of Tennessee had some of their best teams ever at that time.

Soon I saw sports as a way to connect with other boys and men—it was the 90s and I felt like a guy was supposed to be obsessed with sports—so i went all in. I was a freshman in HS watching the entire NFL draft from start to finish and annoying everyone around me with a near-autistic obsession with the game.

After a couple of years, the only sport i found myself able to really follow too closely was football. I was still a bit obsessive. When we finally got internet at our house, I soon found Bruce Eien’s original Xs and Os website—I think it was a Geocities—and studied the whole thing as if i were being tested on it.

To this day, I am grateful to the late, great Coach Eien and consider him as influential on me as anybody i actually played for in those days.