I can't be the only person on Earth who sometimes lies awake at night and worries about what sports team my as yet unborn and unconceived son will root for. Somewhere, there has to be other people who think about this. In fact, I believe this might be the No. 2 fear new fathers have and don't tell their wives about. (For the record, the No. 1 fear they don't tell their wives about is whether the kid is actually theirs.)

Otherwise, what explains the necessity for dressing up kids who can't walk in the team colors? Women think: "Oh, how cute." Men think: "I'll be damned if any son of mine is rooting for (insert hated team's name here)." I'm even convinced there's a market for a device that plays in-utero school fight songs so kids can be indoctrinated in the correct school spirit before they even breathe. What a coincidence: Junior's first words are actually the entire first verse of Hail to the Victors.

As kids, we all knew other kids who just for spite rooted against teams their fathers supported. As a kid, this was mildly amusing. Now that I am older, as a potential father, it is well-nigh cataclysmic.

I appreciate the need for sons to establish their individuality from their fathers -- just not by forsaking the team. For example, I have never heard my own father curse while watching a University of Tennessee football game, but I frequently curse. As I grew older, rather than watch the game on the same television, my father and I would usually watch the game while commandeering two different rooms and two different televisions and yelling back and forth to each other about the game's events. (No one ever said the Travis men were without quirks ... or understanding women.)

Also, when the first half ends poorly, my father would go outside and pick up sticks and rake leaves. I would storm about the house and make telephone calls to football friends across the country with my arms gesticulating wildly as if we were on the verge of nuclear attack and I was the Secretary of Defense. So I understand each person needs to be their own man; what I don't understand is why each man needs his own team.

Not Clay's parents, but much funnier looking

For instance, how would I react if my unborn son decided he were an Alabama Crimson Tide Fan and took to wearing houndstooth caps around the house every Saturday? Even worse, what if my unborn son decided he was a Big Ten fan and spent most of his adolescence strutting around badmouthing SEC teams?

Aside from the Catholic answer, which is have more sons until their voices drown each other out, I think bread and water might be the best treatment. It seems to me rebellion is much easier on a full stomach. I think Robespierre said something akin to this. If he didn't, maybe the French Revolution would have ended better for him if he had.

Or maybe, in the end, it doesn't matter at all. This is absolutely a true fact:

When my sister started college at Vanderbilt University, my father couldn't bear to sign the tuition checks. Instead, he had my mother do it. When I was applying to law school, my mother actually called with my dad on the telephone line and said, "Well tell him, Norm."

My dad then sheepishly confessed, "I'd be happy if you went to Vanderbilt Law School."

Before long, with a son and daughter enrolled at Vanderbilt, my father had abandoned his lifelong antipathy for the school and was listening to and occasionally even attending games. In his own words, "It's not like they play Tennessee every week."

Also not Clay's parents, but they have the same names as Clay's parents

After this long meditation and that neat little allegory, you'd think I might have reached some measure of comfort and reconciliation about my unborn and unconceived son's future sports teams. You'd be wrong. I've learned from Pavlov ... I think we'll play Rocky Top every time he breast feeds.

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