The grim reality of being a senior on the verge of graduation does not hit you all at once. No, it comes in the little moments where the reality of your age is pointed out to you in a way so obvious that it becomes impossible to deny that, as far as the student body of SLU is concerned, you’re an old fart. It starts to become frighteningly clear that, for the many of us set to enter the real world in a few weeks, our lifestyle is about to undergo a big change.

This realization keeps me tossing and turning through one sleepless night after another, worrying about one particular change that I cannot seem to come to grips with. This change is much larger than finding a job, an apartment, or a way to survive starvation without mom and dad’s dime. I’m paralyzed by the terror of what awaits my fate as a sports fan.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be. Changes are coming, my friend, and its not going to make things easy.

How am I supposed to stay up to date with the constant comings and goings of the world of sports if I can’t watch SportsCenter three times each morning?

I have worked hard to put together a schedule that allows me to wake up just in time for the 9 a.m. episode, followed by a repeat at 10 a.m. to fill in anything I missed, and a finale at 11 to test how much of the show I have memorized. Entering the working world is likely to send me to bed before the late night SportsCenter, and up too early to watch even one run of the show in the morning.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. My beloved Tennessee Titans and I have managed to keep our long distance relationship intact for four years, with the promise that some time away from each other would only make us stronger. But now my time at college is up and, instead of heading home to Music City, I have to follow the job trail to Virginia. Can we survive as we continue to grow apart? I can only hope.

The desire to advance my career will likely continue to move me around the country, making it nearly impossible to build any lasting relationships-with sports teams, that is. Instead, I will spend my Sundays in any number of dreary sports bars equipped with a satellite feed, drinking by myself and yelling at the screen in the corner that’s playing the Titans game.

The alternative is worse. What if I do wind up staying in one city with another NFL team? Imagine the guilt of slowly ditching the Titans for my new home team. The idea of a late-night trip to an out-of-the-way Dumpster to trash my old Pacman Jones jersey in secrecy disgusts me.

Even if fate brings me back to Tennessee and everything works out, there are still plenty of other growing pains. Children, for instance. Can’t wait to have them, but they’re gong to be death to my status as a fan. Taking the tots to the game means that I have at least one ticket less for my fellow obnoxiously die-hard fan-friend. The spare $8 I saved all week for that extra Bud Light at the game, it’s now paying for Steve McNair Carney’s (the name of my first son) soft serve-ice cream.

Plus, I won’t be able to heckle and (gasp) I might have to leave the game early when little Stevie’s sugar high from the pre-game cotton candy wears off in the third quarter.

Maybe it’s all just a part of the plan. It’s likely that children will teach me what my parents could not. That is, sports aren’t the most important thing in the world. The sooner I realize that, the less likely I am to turn out to be that overly obnoxious and hyper competitive father at your child’s little league game. After all, the last thing I want to do is snap on an umpire and land on YouTube, creating the next hilarious video for a bunch of college kids who have nothing better to do than sit around and watch SportsCenter three times every morning.

Thanks first and foremost to my two brothers and my Mom and Dad. To my friends, who have made a point of looking for my article each week, and to everyone who supports or works for the campus media.

Most importantly, a sincere thank you to the faculty and students of The University News who work much harder than me every week to produce a product that all of SLU should be proud of. Your hard work, enthusiasm and patience helped me learn that I wanted to be a journalist after graduation, and helped me achieve that goal.