I used to cringe when I heard my grandfather say, “Back when I was a kid …”

Those six words usually meant that we “youngsters” had it too easy and we were about to be told to do something that would be entirely unpleasant.

Well, I’m a little older now, and I can appreciate when I hear one of my elders say, “Back when I was a kid …”

In fact, I think I’ll try it out.

Back when I was a kid, we only had three channels.

There was no such thing as DVR and if you were going to hang a satellite dish on the side of your house, you better be living in a space station.

Back when I was a kid, we didn’t even have a remote control for our huge console television that weighed just less than a dump truck loaded down with a bunch of rocks.

I was the remote.

When one show ended and another was about to begin on another channel, my parents would say, “Andy, go change it to channel 32.”

I’d get up and go crank the old dial on the television until I hit channel 32. That’s right, back when I was a kid there were no buttons on the television.

With only three channels there were certain programs we didn’t miss.

One of those was Monday Night Football on ABC.

On Monday’s I couldn’t wait to click the channel over and catch Hank Williams Jr. asking America if they were ready for some football.

Everyone I knew would get excited about Monday’s game. It didn’t matter who was playing. It just mattered that someone was playing.

These days, you can catch a football game on television just about any night of the week, which has curtailed some of the excitement.

But big games can still create excitement.

We have a couple of those games this week.

They won’t show up on television, but you can catch them on the radio.

No. 8 Fort Dale Academy will face off with No. 2 Tuscaloosa Academy on Friday for a berth in the Alabama Independent School Association Class AAA state championship game.

If you can’t get excited about a top-10 showdown where the winner gets a chance to play for all the marbles and the loser heads home, then you may need to visit a doctor and make sure you have a heartbeat.

The other big game is Greenville High School’s showdown with No. 4 Homewood High School in the first round of the Alabama High School Athletic Association playoffs.

Are you ready for some football?