My beautiful grandbaby, Ashley (age 4), was over visiting recently and we were watching South Carolina’s Gamecocks clean Georgia’s clock in an SEC game on ESPN in an encounter at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, SC.

What’s that song Jiddy (the Arabic word for grandfather)? That’s the Gamecock entrance song, the theme to “2000: A Space Odyssey.”

“Why are they yelling so much Jiddy?” she asked. “Because, they finally have something to cheer about, my beautiful Hiyetti (the Arabic word which means ‘my heart or the breath of my life’).”

“Who are the guys in the striped shirts Jiddo? Why are they blowing whistles?” she inquired. “Those are the referees,” I explained. “They catch the players when they commit a penalty.”

“What is a penalty, Jiddo? Does that mean the made bad choices?” Pretty good explanation, I thought to myself. “Yes sweetie, they made bad choices.”

“Those guys with striped shirts go to my daddy’s games too,” she explained, referring to my son Cory, who Coaches for St. Cloud High School. “My daddy is a coach you know.”

“When they make bad choices,” she continued, “What do they do with them? Do they make them go into time out?” Again, I thought to myself that she had a pretty good interpretation of the rules. “Yes, sweetheart,” I said. “It’s like a time out.”

“How long do they stay in time out? Does it depend on how bad the choice was?” Again, it sounded like a reasonable interpretation so I nodded.

“When they get hurt, do they put a Dora band-aid on the ouch?” she inquired. “Sometimes they have to, but I doubt it’s a Dora band-aid. Those are for little girls like you,” I said.

“Do they make the guy who hurt them go to time out?” she queried. “Sometimes they do, especially if they hit him from behind or if they pull on his helmet.” She surmised, “He could probably hurt himself if they pull on his helmet, couldn’t he?” Again, a good construal, I thought to myself.

As I sat there chatting with my beautiful granddaughter about football rules, it made me wonder why can’t the players get it if a four year old gets it? Later that evening, while blow drying her hair after her bath, we were watching the Tennessee-Oregon game on my bathroom TV when the lightening and rain started.

“My daddy’s team has to come off the field when there’s lightening, Jiddo.” Moments later, they shut the game down because of the lightening. For Tennessee’s sake, it should have stayed shut down. It’s a fact of life that ducks do better than dogs in a gully washer-- Oregon Ducks that is. They went on to hammer the Volunteers in their own house.

“Are they going to put coach in time out because they lost,” Ashley asked. Knowing Tennessee’s whacked out fan base that might just happen- a permanent time out. “I hope not sweetheart. I like their coach.”

“Do you know him Jiddo?” As a matter of fact, I do. I met him when he was a teenager through his parents, Vince and Barbara Dooley. Like yours truly, Barbara was a fellow member of the Lebanese tribe and was also a professional speaker and a talk show host. Vince was the head football coach at Georgia at the time.

When my favorite team, the USC Gamecocks, played against Georgia, Barbara would always sit with me on the Gamecock side of the field while her husband, the great Vince Dooley, coached the Bulldogs.

When USC would head down to Georgia to play the Bulldogs, she would always let me sit in the coach’s booth with her and would then treat me to some wonderful tabouli, kibbe, and grape leaves at their home in Athens afterwards.

That’s where I met Derek, who was only a teenager at the time. He went on to earn a scholarship as a walk-on athlete at the University of Virginia and later earned a law degree. Today, he is married to Dr. Allison Jeffers Dooley, an OBGYN.

“He is a nice guy Ashley,” I said to her. “He is not like their former coach, who was not as nice.”

“Why was he not nice, Jiddo?” she inquired. “Well, he had a big mouth sweetheart. He said things about others that were not nice. Not only that, he was not a very good coach. And after one year on the job, he abandoned his team for another team.”

“Then it was a good thing that he left, wasn’t it Jiddo? Otherwise, he should have been given a time out,” she concluded.

Out of the mouths of babes.