It may be the beginning of the season for the glorious American pastime otherwise known as baseball, but I’d rather it remain football season all year round.

Not growing up with any older brothers around, my affection for football was latent and so my fondness for the sport didn’t develop until my freshman year of high school.

Most girls went to the games just because it was “the thing” to do, and because anyone who was anybody went to the football game on Friday night.

But I, on the other hand, actually enjoyed standing in the bleachers on a crisp fall evening under the bright stadium lights yelling at the refs until I had no voice left. I even enjoyed a few games huddled under a shower curtain during a downpour, for that matter.

Anyway, after the first few games I was hooked. I dutifully attended just about every game, the ones away and the ones at home, during my four years of high school. And it wasn’t long before I’d watch just about any football game that came over my TV screen. I even watched the unsuccessful summer USFL football league, fighting with my father during the times a USFL game conflicted with a White Sox game.

I’m still the same way to this day, and during the off-season I desperately search for anything related to football in the media.

I haven’t been disappointed yet, because it has been interesting to watch the recent developments during last month in the state where everything supposedly is bigger and better.

Texans take their football very seriously, or so I’ve been told. But even I have to admit there is a point when football can be taken too seriously. After all, it’s just a game.

It’s for that very reason that Texas football once again made its way to the headlines last month.

This time it was because a team demanded its coach be fired, and to prove the point that they were serious, all but one of the team’s members voted to go on strike.

The Panthers of Prairie View A&M University, the oldest black college in Texas, went on strike because the coach put football first and education second on the priorities list for his team.

The players, who also consider themselves students, went on strike because they felt that they are being cheated out of an education.

They claim their college educations are being shortchanged by a coach who regularly holds six-hour practice sessions, leaving little time for study, threatens to withhold financial aid from players who performed poorly on the field and institutes dangerous practice drills which have resulted in several injuries. The team plans to continue its efforts with a boycott of spring training later this month if the coach has not been relieved of his position by then.

One of the strike leaders, Herman Moore, a 6-foot-4-inch, 265-pound offensive lineman, was quoted in the Chicago Tribune recently as saying that “We’ve (the team) had this stigma that we’re big dummies.”

The senior marketing major with a 2.8 grade point average has proven that he is anything but a dummy. He said the reaction to the team strike is one of amazement, especially now that the players are making the point loud and clear that they don’t want to play this particular game any more.

Now, something just doesn’t sound right in this situation and I’m amazed that the university’s officials have allowed a problem like this to continue.

Any coach who tells his team that, “If you get books, you’re not going to study anyway, and it makes you forget what you’re here for,” deserves to be fired. It’s not the players who have forgotten what they’re there for, it’s the coach.

Colleges that emphasize football over academics are supposedly nothing new to Texas. But few of the colleges have ever had to deal with players demanding more playing time in the classroom.

There is a point when it just isn’t fun to play any more and the Panthers have reached that point. They don’t want to play around with their futures.