Thoughts about the world of Thanksgiving football while waiting for the Thanksgiving turkey…

I’m not always thrilled to be heading out of my house at 9:15 a.m. in the sometimes-freezing cold on a holiday morning when everyone else I know is sleeping in or enjoying some coffee and breakfast, but I can’t deny that I’m a sucker for Thanksgiving football.

Really, I think I’m just a sucker for any sort of long-lasting tradition, when people can wax poetic about the old days and exaggerate stories about the time that so-and-so ran for 600 yards and six touchdowns in a hailstorm to lift Pilgrim over Warwick Vets in 1964. I eat that stuff up.

I like seeing the old players on the sidelines and seeing the new players grasping what a football game on a Thursday morning means to a bunch of old-timers. With so much negativity surrounding the game of football these days, particularly at the highest level, high school Turkey Day games are one of the most substantial reminders of how great football can be.

At this point in my life, I’ve somehow turned into one of those old-timers, and I essentially tell my memories of Thanksgiving football to my family every year, and they just humor me while pouring more gravy on their meals in the hopes of drowning out my rambling.

For reference, my senior year at Hendricken we nearly lost to Toll Gate as heavy favorites because the Titans recovered two early onside kicks and scored both times.

Yes, yours truly was on the hands team.

We ended up winning 33-25. I still have the DVD copy of the game and sometimes bust it out on Thanksgiving to go with my stories. Again, more humoring from my, more gravy.

The biggest memory I have from that game, though, is not an overvalued sense of how I played or anything. Rather, it’s how close we came to losing, how much the unexpected happened in a game that was supposed to follow the script.

Welcome to Thanksgiving football.

More than anything, that’s what I’ve come to expect. The unexpected. There have been exceptions over the years, when the game plays out exactly how it should (See: Vets over Pilgrim, 2012, 2013 or Hendricken over Toll Gate, 2011, 2012). But for the most part, funny things happen. The rivalries bring out the best in teams, usually the underdogs, and the games tend to be competitive.

I expect that to be the case this year, too. Warwick Vets is a huge underdog to Pilgrim, and the ’Canes should be based on the regular seasons that both teams have had.

But would a Vets upset shock me? No way.

In the other game, Hendricken and Toll Gate aren’t anywhere near evenly-matched, but the Hawks have the Super Bowl to look ahead to, and if they’re using last year as a model then they’ll play a lot of reserve players in the game.

That gives Toll Gate a chance. Could the Titans ride their running game to a streak-breaking victory over the Hawks?

I don’t see why not.

I’m not sitting here making any bold predictions, or telling you how everything is going to play out. I just like the fact that there is so much uncertainty in these games, that the rivalries are sometimes so fierce (particularly Pilgrim-Vets) that the stupid “throw the records out the window” phrase actually applies.

I just like Thanksgiving football.

I can feel you pouring the gravy and nodding your head like a robot while reading this, so I’ll wrap it up. I know I’m rambling. That’s what happens after a few years on the sidelines, I guess.

So enjoy the games. Once you get past the cold, and the early wake-up call, it’s always worth it. After all, Thanksgiving is the best holiday there is, and the football is part of the package.

Thanks for humoring me.

Kevin Pomeroy is the sports editor at the Warwick Beacon. He can be reached at 732-3100 and kevinp@rhodybeat.com.