Ball and Bono

Home on a Friday night, unfathomable in a previous life. But the kids are down, Bono is singing me a lulluaby, and Coors Light is my warm milk. Beats a kick in the crotch.

As summer turns to fall each year, I'm, well, I'm a coach's wife. Jenn is the drill team director at Round Rock Stony Point High, home of the Tiger Dancers and, until recently, the hapless Tigers. Friday nights are football nights, have been for eight years now, but McCoy is a most fickle fan. To a 22-month-old, football games mean stairs and bleachers and crashes and saves. To dad, it's Friday Night Frights.

Counting my stint as a sportswriter, I've attended a high school football game almost every Friday for 15 years (McCoy is sick tonight with a Darth Vadian chest thing, so we sat this one out). Truthfully, I enjoy the high school game more than any other level, the our-town-against-your-town nature of it, the balls-out effort from undersized kids who'll never sniff the next level. (Note: I wouldn't bunch the games that I'll see this season - Stony Point versus Vista Ridge, for instance, doesn't exactly capture my imagination - with an Odessa Permian-Midland Lee matchup "back in the day," but that's probably because I'm old and, like many a washed-up jock, the older I get, the better it all was.) College football, though I love it, is every bit a business, both in size of player and ticket receipts, as the pro game, and there's an air of "jobsmanship" around both that leaves me a little cynical.

That said, I'd give my pinkie toe for an Ohio State national championship (Get well soon, Beanie).

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Bono is done now and, somewhere, sleeping in his shades.

Here are my 5 favorite U2 songs:

(1) Where the Streets Have No Name - If the opening guitar solo doesn't give you chills, you've clearly had a lobotomy. The Edge could play a car horn and sound biblical.

(2) One - Voted by one publication as the greatest song ever, "One" is "two" on my list.

(3) Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - But it MUST be the live version with someone who sounds like Nell Carter harmonizing.

(4) Tie: Angel of Harlem - Peppy, plus I'm sucker for horns. And "All I Want is You" - Because it's easy to play on guitar.

(5) With or Without You - Bit cheesy, but it was a good college make-out song. Also, did you now that if you listen to it three times consecutively, then once backward, then a fourth time forward, then you'll actually get a hickey?

You may note that these are all older U2 songs. The older Bono gets, the better he was....