After the Redskins’ victory, I moved back to California.  The Raiders relocated to Los Angeles along with me, and they brought with them the same quarterback who had led my college team to a Rose Bowl victory more than a decade before, Jim Plunkett.  How could I not pull for big Jim--especially when the majority of his pro career had been cruelly disappointing, and he was fairly widely regarded as washed up by the time the Raiders finally brought him on board?

When the Raiders won the Super Bowl, it was as if all the earlier travails in my football-watching life had occurred simply to provide contrast to enhance the bliss I now enjoyed.  I felt a kind of completeness I had never known before.

Then, just as suddenly as they had arrived, the Raiders left Southern California.  Football went out of my life.

I suppose it was just as well.  I had young children to raise, and a wife who considered herself a football widow if I watched a game a week.

But after my wife became an ex and the kids were more grown, there still wasn’t anything I cared about watching.

A great emptiness was upon me.  Would I ever again enjoy a deep relationship?  Was that kind of intense, burning passion still possible for a guy at my stage of life?