It's happening again!!! Like Dr. Jekyll I can feel the evil twisted being within me beginning to rise, blinking its eyes at the sun. Dark, coarse hair has sprouted on my knuckles. My nose and mouth have taken on an elongated, snout-like appearance. My children cower in fear as I stalk the house, randomly barking and howling. That not-quite-dead monster is proving that it is very much alive, and its time has drawn close.
IT IS DAWG TIME IN THE CLASSIC CITY!!!
I cannot help it. I was bitten at birth. Now, every fall, the leaves begin to change and so do I. I run wild through the countryside, stopping only to feed. I chew a chicken neck here, chomp some tiger tail there. Once every seven years or so I sample a gator steak. More than once in the last ten years I have tasted manflesh, as some landlocked orange state has sent its volunteer navy after me for reasons unexplained. Too full at the end of the year for much else, I snack on yellow stinging insects until January, when I am served a bowlful of some hapless badger or turkey. Then, around the middle of the first month of the year, I change back, the coarse hair receding, the human features returning.
I am not alone. I sense others, smell others. Many are close. Many are as ravenous as I am. We are most dangerous when we travel in packs.
There is a myth that we are color-blind. This is a dangerous lie. We are drawn to orange, blue, and garnet, and are driven nearly insane by Old Gold.
There is a myth that we cower after a defeat. Believing this could cost you your gullet. Bellies empty, we return, ravenous. Last year, we were denied food four weeks out of five. We returned to devour the seasons of three teams consecutively -- destroying a tiger's national championship hopes, crushing a conference chance for a group of wasps, and tearing out the throat of the top-ranked defense in all the land.
There is a myth that those who are strange to us can tame us. Our response: a litany of rabid barks. Come into our dawghouse and try, we say to Broncos, to Buffaloes, to Cowboys and Catamounts, to Blazers and Boilermakers, to Seminoles and to Blue Raiders alike.
It's that time of year again. If you are not like me, you may want to turn back now. This time of year, I am able to smell your weakness. This time of year, you don't want to be around me if you're not, like me, a rabid Dawg.
This time of year, I get very hungry.
Red and Black, Win or Lose
