Say hello to foot, ball
it’s that time of year again. grab a beer and some nachos and plunk yourself down in front of your 72" hi-definition plasma screen with dolby 5.1, the boys of fall and winter are here. football season is upon us once more.
see, what I hate most about football is that I can’t get into it. every year I join one of these fantasy leagues, wherein one “drafts” certain “players” onto a “team” which he “watches” and gains “points” when they win or catch a pass or scratch their athletic supporter in real life. sick? kind of. fun? depends.
in my case, not really. not because I dislike football at all. just because I missed the boat when I was about six and never got into professional sports like all the boys my age are supposed to. I actually like football. I like getting together with a bunch of friends and socializing, and having an excuse to gorge myself with processed cheese flavored dip, buffalo wings and beer. it’s just the actual watching football and keeping track of any player or team always eludes me, and it’s nearly impossible to catch up with anything that’s going on. what I really need is an intensive six-week college course on football—the rules, the history, the players, some basic plays, and how to politely brush off my date/girlfriend when she makes plans to go to dinner/the ballet/her parents’ house on the same night my favorite team is in a clutch game that will ultimately decide their place in football valhalla.
so there’s this whole element of me not knowing what the hell I’m doing or who to pick when it comes time to draft players for my fantasy team. I figure a fantasy team is a good inroad to getting to know the sport, but how good is it if I’m perpetually ranked last in the league and subject to humiliation and deriding from the other participants, who are much more well versed in the sport than I?
it’s not just football. it’s baseball, too. and the other football (soccer) and tennis and golf and rugby and cricket and hurling and curling and just about anything else you can kick a ball or shake a stick at. the only thing I ever followed with some keenness was ice hockey, but after I stopped playing, my interest diminished rapidly, and thus I don’t even know if wayne gretzky still plays for the los angeles kings or if they still have two blue lines (last time I checked, actually, they had changed the shape of the crease, the area in front of the net).
so in some ways it’s good. I have more free time. not constantly being preoccupied with how my team is doing means no sportscenter or games to watch, so instead I spend my time ... updating blogs. on the other hand, I’m out in left field whenever the topic turns to sports in a social situation. but that’s okay with me. someday I’ll meet a nice girl who will be totally fine with this gap in my masculinity, and instead of watching the packers play the raiders, I’ll be watching j-lo play some one-dimensional character whose only problem in life is that she can’t get married without SOMETHING going completely haywire (with humorous results). and that, my friends, is worth more than any super bowl trophy. nothing like having your dignity compromised by a woman exploiting the absence of sports in your life.
see, what I hate most about football is that I can’t get into it. every year I join one of these fantasy leagues, wherein one “drafts” certain “players” onto a “team” which he “watches” and gains “points” when they win or catch a pass or scratch their athletic supporter in real life. sick? kind of. fun? depends.
in my case, not really. not because I dislike football at all. just because I missed the boat when I was about six and never got into professional sports like all the boys my age are supposed to. I actually like football. I like getting together with a bunch of friends and socializing, and having an excuse to gorge myself with processed cheese flavored dip, buffalo wings and beer. it’s just the actual watching football and keeping track of any player or team always eludes me, and it’s nearly impossible to catch up with anything that’s going on. what I really need is an intensive six-week college course on football—the rules, the history, the players, some basic plays, and how to politely brush off my date/girlfriend when she makes plans to go to dinner/the ballet/her parents’ house on the same night my favorite team is in a clutch game that will ultimately decide their place in football valhalla.
so there’s this whole element of me not knowing what the hell I’m doing or who to pick when it comes time to draft players for my fantasy team. I figure a fantasy team is a good inroad to getting to know the sport, but how good is it if I’m perpetually ranked last in the league and subject to humiliation and deriding from the other participants, who are much more well versed in the sport than I?
it’s not just football. it’s baseball, too. and the other football (soccer) and tennis and golf and rugby and cricket and hurling and curling and just about anything else you can kick a ball or shake a stick at. the only thing I ever followed with some keenness was ice hockey, but after I stopped playing, my interest diminished rapidly, and thus I don’t even know if wayne gretzky still plays for the los angeles kings or if they still have two blue lines (last time I checked, actually, they had changed the shape of the crease, the area in front of the net).
so in some ways it’s good. I have more free time. not constantly being preoccupied with how my team is doing means no sportscenter or games to watch, so instead I spend my time ... updating blogs. on the other hand, I’m out in left field whenever the topic turns to sports in a social situation. but that’s okay with me. someday I’ll meet a nice girl who will be totally fine with this gap in my masculinity, and instead of watching the packers play the raiders, I’ll be watching j-lo play some one-dimensional character whose only problem in life is that she can’t get married without SOMETHING going completely haywire (with humorous results). and that, my friends, is worth more than any super bowl trophy. nothing like having your dignity compromised by a woman exploiting the absence of sports in your life.
posted by tyssejc at 6:43 PM
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