My Mom's playing full contact football. She's an offensive guard for the all-ladies team here in Lee County. By knowing what an offensive guard is, she now knows more about football than me.

Today was their first game and I was amazed at the crowd that turned out. Several hundred people... enough to fill the bleachers at Pennington Middle School. Yeah... PMS. I told Mom PMS isn't just where the game's being played; it's also why... and maybe even when.

Many of the players are teachers and I ended up sitting among students of one of them. The guys were pretty ruthless... making fun of them for about everything. I guess that's to be expected in a redneck little town like this. Most of the men were there to ridicule these crazed women trying to play a man's sport. But before I'm too hard on them... it also occurred to me that the fact that the game was played at all demonstrated a big difference between the West and many hard-core Islamic countries. Imagine a women's football team in Saudi Arabia.

Mom's the oldest player on the team. Without saying how old she is... she was in her late 20's when I was born. She started and played nearly the entire game. I was so proud of her. She probably just thinks of it as a good time and a way to stay in shape... but how many AARP-eligible women would even think of playing full contact football? I think I found out where my adventurous tendencies come from.

They lost. 12-6. The men around me were muttering about what should've been done and how these women have potential if they just got it together. They missed the point. The fact that this game was played in a rural, conservative place like this... and the fact that hundreds turned out to see it... sounds cheesy... but everybody won.|