It was a February evening, growing colder and darker by the minute. Although we knew it was coming, we had no way to prepare ourselves for the inevitable.

In the final moments, when certainty would no longer be denied, I bowed my head as my husband choked back a tear. The confetti settled, the television went black and it was official: Another NFL season was over.

What would we do with ourselves on Sunday afternoons? And Monday nights? Would we stare at each other in silence? Would we have to eat our seven-layer dip in front of a blank television screen? Or worse yet, some golf tournament?

There was a time I wouldn't have cared, before my husband initiated me into the pigskin world many years ago. I wasn't an instant convert, but at the time we were still a shiny new couple and I understood that for him, this obsession was no passing fancy. Ultimately he got to me in one of those "if you can't beat 'em" moments.

The sport should have sparked some kind of interest in me all along. After all, I lettered in high school football.

Apparently the athletic department handed out "letters" like handshakes. Even as one half of a stats tag-team, I didn't technically earn it.

It was all thanks to the other stat keeper, my unfortunate and irrefutable better half. She tried to explain yards and downs. She hoped to shine a light on touchbacks and safeties. She attempted to expand my football knowledge into an area beyond "our team is wearing blue."

I was excited to get free admission into the games.

She finally concluded I had no potential and assigned me to one player per game.

"Just tell me how many yards that guy runs. See, the field is marked with chalk."

Eventually, I graduated from prep football into the big leagues. During my initial efforts of connecting with this game, and in turn, my new roommate/husband, I tried to find a team I could follow, other than the Miami Dolphins, whom he was already hoarding.

I muddled along until 1993-the year of the Joe Montana/Marcus Allen comebacks. I was a Kansas City fan.

Being a Chiefs fan teaches essential life lessons such as patience, loyalty and humility. Since they seem to fall apart at all the wrong times, these qualities ensure a fan base for the following season. Their collapses just give us something to look forward to next year. (Uh, right?)

The key to staying positive is a trip to Arrowhead Stadium.

There's nothing like sitting in the stands on game day. An enormous sea of red shirts-and we can usually see every single one since pretty much everyone is below our cheap "section 300" seats-thousands of arms in a unified tomahawk chop, the $4 hot dogs and $5 drinks.

And it just wouldn't be a game if we weren't near an obnoxious air horn-packing fan who spent $5 too many on their last cold one and lets everybody know which play should have been called.

There's predictably at least one of these in each section and they always seem to sit directly behind us.

Our daughter is in for an education when we take her to her first game this fall. I'm hoping for a G-rated section, or at the very least, PG-13, which will be a crap shoot since the Oakland Raiders will be visiting.

She doesn't understand the game yet and I'm positive she won't understand some of the words coming out of the mouths of disgruntled fans.

But she understands enough for now, that our team is wearing red.