The Season Always Comes Back

Somewhere this Saturday, a grown adult will put on the same colors they have worn every autumn since they were eight years old, settle into the same seat, and feel the season pick up right where it left off.
​
Football season is back, and I want to talk about why a Saturday ritual matters more after retirement than at any other point in a life.
​
Retirement rearranges life. The alarm goes silent, the commute disappears, the Monday meeting stops, and even the good rituals, the ones you chose, tend to shift and evolve as the years move on. Most of the structure of a life turns out to have been dictated by your job.
​
But your team’s season is a routine that escapes disruption. You get to hear the same fight song, see the same mascot, and the conversations with friends and family after a big win.
​
I have come to believe that kind of reliability is important. When so much of life is in transition, a comfort that keeps its schedule is worth holding onto, and there is no shame in loving it precisely because it does not change.
​
I see it in the families we work with. The team is the reason three generations end up on one couch. It is the reason the phone rings on a Saturday night, and the reason an old roommate is still an every-week friend forty years later. A season gives the fall a shape, and it gives the people in your life a standing reason to show up.
​
This season is particularly special for us, as we’ll be running ads during some broadcasts. We believe the legacy you retire with starts being built early, and for a lot of us, the building starts on a college campus.
​
​Here is the one featuring Oklahoma Sooner great and ESPN commentator Dusty Dvoracek.​
​
So wherever your loyalties lie this fall, lean into them. Wear the colors. Make the phone call. Keep the seat.
​
Life is short, play often.
​