Ah, it's that glorious time of year. No, I don't mean that you finally finished the Thanksgiving leftovers and you can see the bottom of the refrigerator again. I mean that special time for lovers of sport, when football and basketball seasons meet.

(Before you Hurricanes fans start in -- yes, I know it's hockey season, too. But I believe ice is fit only for cooling my rum drink.)

It's heaven: Double the opportunities to feast upon fine sports fare.

It shocks me that many people don't pay proper attention to what they eat before and during a game. Sports nutrition isn't just for those on the field or court; it's important for those who stand and cheer as well.

The link between fans and food started for me with a sausage ball.

At my first job on a small North Carolina newspaper in the early 1980s, my apartment was a five-minute drive from the office. Unlike most of the other staffers, I owned a color TV with a screen larger than a loaf of bread.

So, on one fateful Friday, the first round of the annual ACC basketball tournament loomed. Those of us who were UNC-Chapel Hill fans realized that we could get to my place and see a good hour of the game on our lunch break. That added up to most of the small staff, and those who weren't fans became ones at the prospect of free snacks outside the office.

The boss was lenient on tournament Fridays, as he was on sunny Wednesdays, when most of the males in the office would vanish to the golf course. Besides, he could find his staff with just one phone call, if he really needed us.

As a good Southern girl, I felt obligated to offer my guests some refreshment, but I wasn't much of a cook. Sausage balls were easy, and meaty enough for the mostly male group. They're easily baked ahead and frozen.

I warmed up some sausage balls and we dug in. Suddenly, a call went against our beloved team -- a gross miscarriage of justice in the expert estimation of the crowd in my living room. Enraged, a fellow reporter expressed his displeasure using the closest thing at hand. He flung a sausage ball at the TV screen, following it with speculation on the official's body parts and past GPA.

It was a moment that went down in my sports food history.

After that day, food and sports were inexorably tied. As my cooking skills have improved, I've added non-projectile foods to the menu. But invitations for big games, such as UNC vs. Duke, still include the warning, "sausage balls will be flung tonight."

However, when most people think of sports-related eating, they think of tailgating before football games or NASCAR races.

The pre-game tailgate is the land of optimists. Everyone is a winner there, where hope wafts heavenward like the aroma of grilling burgers. Superstitious fans may insist on the presence of certain charms -- a lucky team hat, for example, or the cookies that a friend brought to the last winning tilt. We all know that those kinds of things influence the gods of sport. And they taste good -- in the case of the cookies, at least.

My husband and I require Oreo cookies at our tailgates, and at most home game-watching parties as well. I don't quite know how this tradition started. I think it was that we both like Oreos, which is why we can't keep them in the house all the time, so I started getting them as a treat for tailgates. Of course, we never eat the whole bag at one tailgate, and they'd obviously go bad by the next game, and it would be a waste to leave them just lying around ... .

My husband's appreciation for football grew when he realized that games were an excuse for me to make, and him to eat, fried chicken. Fried chicken is my favorite outdoor tailgate food -- great hot, great cold, nice and messy, easily portable. It's the perfect food, and if you look at the numbers of fast-food chicken buckets and boxes at your average football game, you'll see I'm not the only one who thinks so.

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