There are few sacred times here in Ohio. But, of the couple that exist, they are incredibly sacred. Things you don't mess with. Times when (almost) every man, woman, and child in the entire state is cemented firmly in their family room, glued to the television. Times that no man dare interfere with lest he bring upon himself the wrath of his fellow man accompanied in all likelihood by a dose of pestilence thrown in for good measure.

Those times are ...

First and foremost, any Ohio State football game and ...

A distance but still crucial runner up ... the Bengals and Browns game.

Any man who interferes with one of these events ... well, God bless his poor soul. He might just find himself tarred and feathered or run out of town on a rail.

Are you guessing where this is leading?

This past Sunday afternoon found us not inside watching the Bengals - Browns game but instead in our back yard with some good friends digging post holes for our new fence.

Until about 3:30 ... which equates to about the middle of the third quarter of ... the Bengals and Browns game.

We hit a television cable wire. Not just our own cable but one that serves many neighbors as well. Plunged into football darkness, all of them. The end of one of Ohio's sacred times.

It wasn't long before neighbors started showing up in our yard. They knew that we were digging. They knew we were the culprits. Oh, in broad daylight they were being nice enough alright but I had visions of them showing up under the cover of darkness that night with pitchforks and hoods.

And, yes, we called before we dug. But we hit the wire anyway.

I called the cable company. The soonest they could get there would be Monday. This was Sunday. Not good. I was concerned that one of my neighbors might need to be taken to a stress center if the outage continued that long.

Fortunately one of the friends who was there was much more handy than I and, within an hour, he had made a temporary splice in the cable wire that returned Sunday afternoon NFL normalcy to our neighborhood.

Except the game was over.