My Washington Commanders are one game away from the Super Bowl and will play in the NFC Championship game next Sunday.
How is such a sentence possible?
I’m a proverbial longtime NFL fan who has somehow managed to stick with my home team through thick and thin. For more than 30 years, she has lived a life of excruciating pain and a gut-wrenching lifestyle.
The NFL is in my DNA, growing up in the Washington DC area with two passionate parents who loved Washington football. I admired the grit of the Over-the-Hill gang of the 1970s, read “Future Is Now” avidly, and lit a candle when coach George Allen left. I worshiped at the altar of coach Joe Gibbs in the 1980s, living and breathing the radio narration of games by the Hogs, the Fun Bunch, and Huff and Puff.
We played in multiple playoff games and won three Super Bowls. We expected to win. I remember listening to sports radio after the game when a fan dialed 911 to report a robbery. Worst call of the game.
The waiting list for Washington football season tickets was legendary and was decades long all day long. Years before StubHub and the NFL Ticket Exchange, I paid a scalper $300 in 1991 to buy three tickets to a game at my beloved rickety RFK Stadium. There, wide receiver Art Monk set a passing record that is close to our feet.
I finally got my name on the waiting list for season tickets in 2002 for a “new” stadium in Landover, Maryland, miles away from the nation’s capital and all the monuments and memorials the NFL wants to highlight in its game coverage. I posted it.
My number was 43,595. By the time I got to my seat, I thought I was almost in my 80s. But two years later, in 2004, I got the call to join.
And somehow, just two months later, Gibbs returned as head coach. The seats were so high that my nose bleed, and since I’m afraid of heights, I spilled most of my beer while shivering on the way up to the top, and I rarely stood up for the national anthem. But I was there and was ecstatic to see the “In Gibbs We Trust” sign adorning the bowl below.
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What awaited us after that was a journey that was far more difficult than we could have imagined. A disastrous season coincided with some of the best. A few playoff games played under Gibbs 2.0. An unexpected playoff berth with pylon-diving quarterback Taylor Heinicke. They defeated Tom Brady’s team.
And, of course, the 2012 season brought us what we thought would be our savior: speedy, two-way, charismatic quarterback Robert Griffin III, our master of the spread offense. But after lighting up the league, fans and stadiums, our hopes were dashed when RGIII suffered a knee injury in a playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
That day, I left the stadium in tears.
Rock bottom came quickly. A local radio station once handed out paper bags at a subway station near the stadium with the words “Love the team, hate the owner” written on them. In a North Korean-style move, team owner Daniel Snyder sent a young staff member to confiscate bags before anyone could enter the gate.
As the opposing team’s fans began to fill the seats and our offense took to the field, chants of “defense, defense” rang through the air.
A few years ago, I left a game early in the third quarter and noticed there was a line to exit the stadium.
During a breast cancer awareness video shown on the Jumbotron in 2022, the stadium was filled with boos when Snyder’s wife Tanya, a breast cancer survivor, appeared. Was the owner so insulted that it seemed like we were booing a breast cancer survivor?
I found myself in a situation where I couldn’t find anyone to attend the game with me, whether it was a friend, boyfriend, family member, or complete stranger. For free.
But I made a decision. Despite the depressing carousel of coaches, quarterbacks, and dysfunction, I remained a lifelong fan. I had no intention of giving up. Only one ticket is available.
I quickly moved to the lower bowl and found a great seat in the 17th row from the bottom. Dressed in burgundy and gold, he was loud and proud at every game, and surprisingly hit it off with his fellow seatmates near him. (Looking at you James, Sharonda, and everyone else!)
Then, in 2023, a surprising announcement was made. Snyder finally sold the team. Last year before the season, I attended a rally in downtown Washington, D.C., and when new owner Josh Harris appeared, the crowd cheered, “Thank you, Josh!”
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And then the 2024-25 season arrived. There was a new coach, a real GM, new players and a brilliant, ageless, poised quarterback in Jaden Daniels. The team no longer introduces individual players. They run together through tunnels and smoke before the game. The management team pays homage to the historic players of the past and brings back the “legends” in each game. Our fight song is back. We are not simply standing in a bowl below. We dance and jump and hug each other.
It’s our fans who are shouting “defense” right now. Lo and behold, fans are channeling the 1980s and doing wave after wave. The stadium feels electric. And somehow we won two games in the playoffs.
That crystallized in my mind when Daniels threw a spectacular Hail Mary to beat the Chicago Bears in October and no one wanted to leave. We just wanted to enjoy the moment. Yes, sports can be cruel. 30 sometimes cruel years.
But once you get past the misery, you can sometimes find the magic. That’s what being a fan is all about.
Susan Miller is a senior breaking news editor on USA TODAY’s Nation team.