Earlier this fall, G’s parents came up from Nashville for a long weekend to see our new place, help us pick out furniture, and do all the yard work we’d been avoiding. We grilled, we strolled, we had quiet coffee mornings, and we also went to a UVA football game.

G loves football, her parents love football, and her extended family loves football. I love snacks, and often when we watch football on tv these are provided. I can then curl up with my big bowl of popcorn and listen to the shouts and claps from the safety of club couch. Often someone will put a blanket over me.

Going to an actual football game is not this!

This was my first UVA game, and thankfully I was prepared — psychologically and physically — having heavily researched and pre-walked our route, our gate entrance, and our seat location. I took 2 anxiety pills, packed 3 hand sani bottles, sandwiched myself between family members to avoid the crowds, and it all ended up being fine. I mean, it was wild of course, this being college football, but I didn’t have a panic attack.

Big fan of the cavalier on a real horse, nervous about there being an actual saber involved, and definitely think we should incorporate pyrotechnics into more than just touchdown celebrations (I’d like fireworks after I visit the DMV or clean a toilet).

The game itself ended up being the least impressive actually. We left after halftime because UVA was losing. Consider my glee by this turn of events.

All that to say, the late afternoon walk home was glorious. And once we arrived, I was in a fugue state of slanted sunlight, cool air, and slightly medicated bliss after sitting in the hot sun in a giant mixing bowl with thousands of other people. 

We all were kind of doing our own thing at that point — G was starting the grill, I think Alyson was packing, Kevin must have been out in the yard. So when I got a SimpliSafe notification on my phone, I wasn’t concerned - just curious.

We bought a security system a few years ago after a string of break ins in our neighborhood in DC, and now we could never go back because it’s extremely satisfying to plug into the live cam when you’re homesick on work trips or you’re just upstairs and want to see if your Amazon package has been delivered. The camera also detects and records motion.

When I checked my phone for that specific SimpliSafe notification, it was in the same spirit I always did — assuming a bird had flown by the front porch or that, finally dear god, our mail had been delivered after a month-long lapse.

However. 

It was a football streaker. And I know what you’re thinking right now: First a snake in the house, now this, do these girls need a tutorial on how to lock their doors?

But the SimpliSafe doesn’t lie. And that video showed a man hurrying into our house with limited clothes on. While I watched the video, I could hear someone pattering up the steps. Then a door closed. It got quiet again.

I observed all this as an out of body experience you usually only get from sitting in a New York cab — with the belief that it will all turn out fine, you will reach your destination with a heartbeat, but things will get crazy around 6th Avenue. 

In this case, I didn’t hear anything else from upstairs. And instead of pursuing the intruder (surely a disconsolate fan? maybe after a stop at Durty Nellies), I looked again at the grainy SimpliSafe video.

It’s dusk at this point, so the camera is basically black and white, and the quality is choppy. The guy’s wearing glasses it looks like. He’s not wearing a shirt but maybe he’s got on Crocs? And maybe those aren’t bare legs - yep that’s just a pretty terrible time to be wearing khaki pants.

Jesus Christ that’s my father in law.

Never have I been more grateful to: 1) be so outrageously wrong on first glance and 2) recognize someone by their Crocs.

This fall trip was the first time I’d been comfortable just calling G’s dad “Kevin,” not Mr Kevin Sir Man 🫡  as I had in a variety of combinations for the past 6 years. And now this was also the trip we all got comfortable with the family “scamper” — you know, when you need a piece of clothing from another room (or the car) and you figure, no one’s really around, I bet I can make it. And then your daughter in law’s security system takes a video of you and stores it forever in the cloud. High risk, high reward. 

But the point of all this, besides that Kevin and I are now bonded for life, is that for roughly 30 seconds I truly believed that the UVA football game had gotten so crazy that a naked man had run 1.5 miles from the stadium, through a well-established and highly trafficked neighborhood without pursuit, and walked into our specific house for no other reason than surely because of the stunning new door we just installed.

It’s a stretch, and our subsequent doubled-over viewings of the video confirmed how if you haven’t just been influenced by a loud and hot football game, it’s pretty obvious it’s Kevin from the get go. But I’ve read enough sports books and watched Fever Pitch enough times to know that sports have a pretty wild emotional pull on us and can make us do crazy things. Many of us are invested in a team or player well beyond a rational degree. I love Roger Federer, for example, and will happily watch old Wimbledon matches for hours on end just to see his backhand down the line.

Sports makes us feel things — just like art makes us feel things, books make us feel things … music, stand-up specials, cartoons, even SuperBowl ads with puppies all do this. And connections on an emotional level like that can be an incredible lever to pull, especially if you’re trying to get people to change their behavior.

All of which is to say, one naked story later, that the emotional connection we have with our favorite sports can be channeled to get a massive audience on board for sustainability actions. Here are a few inspiring examples:

Here are a few suggestions that we mortals with a 10mph second serve and a .200 batting average can take from the stands.

🥪 Food: Try a plant-based hot dog or vegetarian snack instead of the double patty. (Eating just one less burger per week is the environmental equivalent of taking a car off the road for 320 miles over the course of a year.)

🍺 Drinks: If you’re at a local rec game, bring your own water bottle. If you’re at a stadium that allows it, do that there too. If not, opt for aluminum cans over plastic ones, as the former is basically infinitely recyclable and doesn’t leach chemicals. (Plus, beer usually comes in cans at games, so is it even really a hard choice?)

🚗 Tailgating: This is a great opp to avoid the single-use cutlery and Solo cups by bringing your own durable stock from home. Then let 'em rattle in your backseat on the way back and run them through the dishwasher.

🚶 Transportation: I highly recommend walking, usually as fast as you can away from a crowded stadium. But if that’s not your thing, driving with a group is a great way to reduce emissions. Micro-transportation like scooters and bikes and ebikes are nice too, and they can get you right up to the venue instead of in Lot Z across the city. Plus, subway and bus options.

🗑️ Trash: If the stadium or facility has composting, toss your leftover food and paper products in those containers. Glass and aluminum can go in the recycling bins. I don’t think you can recycle foam fingers, so probably just hide those in your attic.

Cool news on the trash and composting front from UVA by the way: Last year their Green Games volunteers diverted over 60,000 pounds of waste from the landfill during the six home football games — a task which included diving into trash cans to ensure us neanderthals threw away our stuff in the right bins.