Most of you enjoy American football. I don’t much care for it much, and that makes life difficult. Football is a passtime, language, tribe and religion all rolled up into one, and my inability to remotely care about it whatsoever severely handicaps me socially. It’s also incredibly irritating, because it’s obnoxiously loud and ever-present.
Hard to comprehend, I know. Other than me, who doesn’t like football? What’s not to love? To help you understand the frustrating world I live in, I am going to illustrate an alternate universe in which everyone around you is obsessed with something that you find obscenely boring and moronic: My Little Pony.
My Little Pony was a line of toy figurines which inspired an animated series in the mid-1980′s about magical horses that did something or other involving rainbows and clouds. Frankly I have no idea, as I find both American football and My Little Pony about equally captivating. But if you enjoy the sport, try and imagine living in a country where everyone except you is engrossed with My Little Pony, organizes their weekends around watching the cartoon, buys thousand dollar plasma screen televisions on credit in order to view the ponies in high-definition, gets into barfights about their favorite characters, and suffers dramatic mood swings when one of the breeds of ponies underperforms.
Parking spots maddeningly evaporate on Saturdays.
Everyone assumes you know whatever the hell they’re blithering on about, and also that you give a crap.
Good luck reading a book between September and January in any public restaurant or home.
Any affiliated programs are allowed to crowd out regularly scheduled television shows you watch whenever they want without explanation or apology.
All of the televisions at the gym feature grown men in nice suits spouting asinine gibberish as if whatever they’re babbling about actually matters.
I’ve tried to get into it, but never with success. The game starts and stops every six seconds or so, as if the NFL is sponsored by Aderol. It’s irritating because the stated time left in the game is, from an observer’s perspective, utterly meaningless. “29:26 remaining” means that there are that many minutes left in the special micro-universe of football. So you think you only have to put up with another half hour of grown men getting paid equal sums to the GNP of developing nations just to chase a brown dot up and down a field, but it’s actually going to be four hours. Followed by sluggish, never-ending traffic on the way home.
I can vaguely, dimly understand why people like college football. If you attended a particular college, its athletes on the field are in some capacity your classmates. (I haven’t looked into this, but I’m assuming that the majority of college football players are there primarily for academic purposes and fully graduate.)
However for NFL teams it makes no sense to me at all. Observe the Miami Dolphins. (Or “the fish,” as they are known colloquially by people who don’t know what mammals are.) The Miami Dolphins are owned by a guy from Michigan who lives in New York City. The team’s quarterbacks are from California. What exactly are people in Miami rooting for? The location of the corporate headquarters? A company with access to steroids? I don’t know.
I also feel that the sport is inherently dishonest on some basic level. “Football”? Football? The rest of the world has a comparable sport called “football,” named such because it involves kicking a damned ball all over the place. In American football they hardly ever kick the ball– mostly they run around with it and then stop every eight seconds.
As noted above, I have tried to get into the sport. It would undoubtedly help my career. I simply cannot. Last time I attended a game with my dad, I started clapping when a guy on the field ran really fast, only to be informed that he was on the other team. But I was just impressed at how fast the guy could sprint.
I think it’s a neurological deficiency on my part. There’s some doohicky in the brain that likes forming tribes and competition, and mine is withered and pea-sized. I have my own cliques and communities, but the underlying impulse of football (sublimated warfare: i.e., “my tribe/gang/country is going to kick your ass”) just doesn’t speak to me.
The only redeeming features appear to be Superbowl advertisements and an ongoing cash flow to my Alma Mater.
Oh, and cheerleaders. It might all be worth it for them.
Photo Credit: “Washington Redskins Cheerleader” CC Keith Allison
13 Comments
In response to your (likely rhetorical) question “Other than me, who doesn’t like football?”: I decidedly do not.
I used to be a huge college football fan, and while I still enjoy the game (college only), once I was introduced to ice hockey, football wasn’t as interesting. Hockey actually has continuous series of action and an entire 60 minutes of game play, plus two 18 minute intermissions, can usually be completed in 2.5 hours or less. Much quicker and more entertaining than 60 minutes of football with one break and 4 hours or so. At least that’s how long I remember football taking. Been awhile since I’ve actually watched a full game.
This sums up exactly how I feel about football… except I don’t care much for cheerleaders.
@ Melody– aren’t hockey players allowed to violently wail on each other as well, so long as they don’t use any sticks? That seems more entertaining.
I think a good way to spruce up American football would be to have a little bench in the middle of the field with a loaded revolver. Nothing more. No rules or directions about it. Just knowing that there was a gun lying around would really make the whole thing a lot more entertaining.
I am amused by your analogy to My Little Ponies, considering how the most recent animated show of it, My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic has absolutely blasted off with pretty much the entire geek community. Fans dub themselves “bronies.”
I have yet to be sucked into this phenomenon in any real capacity, but damn if I can’t help but enjoy editted footage of the show put to the song “What a Man’s Gotta Do” from Dr. Horrible.
You be careful who you lump in with the “geek” community sir. Most of us revile bronies and are quite content to make fun of them with the rest of you.
I LIKE THEM CHEERIN BURDS, AYE.
I got down to the last photo in your post, and forgot what the article was about. Sorry, Heaton, I don’t have any idea whether I liked this one or not…
I don’t much care for much but much football makes me not much care either, eh?!
The My Little Ponies RULE!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, Andrew, fisticuffs are allowed in hockey, just a 5 minute penalty with few exceptions. Not my favorite part of the game, but I understand its purpose.
Many things you said, I totally agree with. Can’t get into it. Never had a strong interest for it. It can be very socially isolating, living in the South, being African-American and male and being uninterested in it. Nevertheless, I still make myself a varied person!
I wholeheartedly agree with this entire topic, especially the end. I really detest being shunned and looked down on when I fail to join in the chest-beating neanderthalic “tradition” of rooting for any team.
Here in the UK, if you’re a straight male and you don’t like or are not interested in football you might as well have leprosy. I’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve been with a group of male work colleagues, and the conversation has predictably and swiftly turned to football. I have literally nothing to say, apart from attempting a knowledgeable nod whenever I recognise a name. It’s not that I even positively dislike the game; it’s just that I don’t find it appealing, in the same way that I don’t find a million other hobbies appealing, from morris dancing to incest.