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The leaves are changing and the air is crisp, and that means it’s time for the boys to start throwing the ol’ pigskin around again. The NFL kicked off its regular season a few weeks ago, and this year I desperately want to figure out how this game fucking works.
When it comes to football, I am completely ignorant of the intricacies to the game. I’ve got the concept down: you try to get the ball to the other end of the field, I know two positions: the quarterback and the kicker, and I know names of the players who have dated the Kardashians: Derrick Ward, Reggie Bush, and Miles Austin. Other than that, I’m in the dark. I feel like I’m filling the stereotypical role of the dumb broad who can’t comprehend sports, and got most of her football knowledge from watching Remember The Titans when it was on ABC Family every single night for five years.
I have a lot of respect for women who actually get football and know their shit. I also appreciate when they keep it to themselves instead of live-tweeting a game in an obvious effort to draw attention to the fact that they’re watching a football game AND have a vagina. While I don’t think I’ll ever be at that level, I would feel a little better about myself if I could stop asking dumb questions about how a team can have 3 points when I thought the scoring was only in multiples of 7.
Talking with my female peers, I’ve come to realize that most of them learned about the game from watching with their dad growing up. I have a substantial handicap in this regard. My dad has probably never even watched a televised NFL game. He grew up in a state with no professional sports teams, and just never got into it. I was once with him in a sporting goods store while he was wearing a Philadelphia Eagles tee shirt, and the cashier asked him who they were playing that day. He had to admit he had absolutely no idea, and that shirt silently disappeared after that interaction.
Since my father is out as my sports mentor, I’ve had to rely on other sports fans in my life as resources. I’ve been to many a Super Bowl party where I strategically position myself next to someone who gets it and I know will be nice enough not to freak out on me for asking questions every five minutes. A kind friend of mine once had her husband, who coached high school football, draw a diagram for me to outline how the lines work on the field for the player formations, and he listed the positions and what each of them do. It was semi-helpful in the moment, but I can’t walk around for the rest of my life with a football cheat sheet I pull out for games.
My significant other is such a saint hanging out with me on Sundays while I just spout out the most basic questions, and pick which team to root for based on which uniform has a better color scheme. I’ve asked him about his “draft” multiple times and he always gently reminds me that it’s only called a draft when you pick the first time, after that it’s just called a fantasy team. He spends the entire time during commercial breaks explaining to me why what’s going in is either good or bad, who isn’t playing well, how downs work, etc. It’s like a part-time job for him, and I wouldn’t even be upset if he told me I’m not allowed to watch the games with him anymore.
The thing about football is it’s so much information to absorb. There’s a million different kind of “whatever-backs” on the field, and there are different plays where you can do different things. The quarterback doesn’t always just throw the ball, sometimes he’s running, or sometimes they kick the ball when they haven’t scored a touchdown. I swear every time I watch, the NFL adds a new rule just to prevent me from ever figuring my shit out.
The worst part of this whole issue is I genuinely want to understand what’s going on and it just isn’t clicking. I feel like a terrible American every time I hear the people in the stands going wild and I have no idea why. I want to be cheering along with them.
It is my 2017 goal to have this year be the year I finally grasp how it’s done and can follow a game in its entirety. Maybe if I figure it out a little bit more, I could dye my hair blonde and ESPN will hire me as a sideline reporter. .
Respond
Kell
future soccer mom of America (AKA I drive a Volvo.) Miracle is my favorite movie and it should be yours too.
@backpackfanclub
@instagram
Here’s the first thing you need to know about football.
College football is way better than the NFL. and it isn’t even close
Hard Sup
Unless you don’t have a college team you can root for because you/your spouse/your parent went to that school. Then you’re just a hanger-on, and those fans are incredibly annoying. Also their excessive celebration rules suck.
Agreed
Just pick fun or on the rise teams to follow. 2017 recommendations: OU, OkSt, PSU, Purdue, Maryland, Louisville, Clemson, Wake Forest, Miss St, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Oregon, USF, etc. Don’t go full bore on any team, just pay attention to the fun.
You don’t even need a team to root for. Just embrace the chaos
Good morning. Here is football 101: A group of large guys huddle around and prevent another group of large guys from killing their leader who has 4 chances every 10 yards to try and re-up their chances by passing an invisible yellow line by either throwing a leather ball to faster, skinnier guys or handing it off to shorter, stockier guys with better torque. If they fail within 4 tries, the guys trying to kill the leader get the ball for their leader to try and do the exact same thing facing the opposite way on the field. They try to pass a white line into a different colored grass/turf box to obtain 6 points. Then a washed up soccer player comes and kicks it through 2 metal prongs and they get 1 additional point. If they fail to get into the box, the overpaid ex-soccer player comes to kick the oval shaped ball through the prongs to get 3 points. Keep in mind that all of these guys get paid insured amounts of money, more many than some country’s GDP just to play a game and it’s all because major corporations poor money into it for advertising purposes and to propagate the military. It’s a psy-ops tactic to present a spectacle to keep the masses happy and distracted (bread and circuses) while they run off to the bank and debase the very currency that the masses used to be there and pay 200% mark ups on drunk liquids!
Thanks, I definitely won’t read this 🙂
It would be in your best interest if you did lol
Definitely don’t read that. It’ll confuse you even more…
Was really expecting the dark turn to be the physical and mental disabilities that will inevitably plague the majority of the players. You feeling optimistic about life today Nived?
I’m feeling alright, I left that part out because I’m more concerned about the physical and mental disabilities caused by the overall concept of “working” and how we are all being socially conditioned and extorted
I… can’t disagree.
Never change
It’s spelled *pour….
The amount of effort you put into comments is often not worth it.
I wrote that while taking a shit while calling into a conference call so it was worth it trust me
Ok bud
K….cup
Sixpack, you seem like you’re having a bad morning.
Don’t listen to him, Nived. Your comments are totally worth it.
The girlfriend has spend several saturdays over the past 3 years watching football with me from 12pm-11pm (she can’t hang during the west coast games), and while she acts like she knows what’s going on, she recently found out that “rushing yards” mean’t yards gained via the run. She can’t fathom why they refer to the plays as running plays, with a running back, but they’re “rushing” yards. She also tried to call a play this past weekend saying “they will score on a loopy floater”. They ran a slant and the qb threw a dart. She said she called it. Guess that’s a “loopy floater”.
“Loopy floater” is definitely something I drop into a toilet
Hockey season starts soon who is excited!
obviously me 🙂
ready for a three-pete
three-peat?
haha i’m a professional writer/editor as my day job. i should probably know which one it is LMAO
one championship, repeat, threepeat
either way, phil kessel is a stanley cup champion x2
Go Caps! This is our year! jk slowly preparing for heartbreak
caps fans say that every year go Pens
you shut your dirty mouth, phillip
I just found a hockey bar near my new apartment and I have never been more excited for the season to start!
Pretty excited about Blackhawks. Think they did a lot of shuffling to get Toews line back to being productive and the debrincat-schmaltz-Kane line will be filthy.
I can’t wait for Barry Melrose’s all-knowing mullet to come back into the spotlight
my sister and i always call JR “mud flap”…because his sort of mullet hair looks like the mud flaps on car tires haha
I miss the helter skelter of Doc.
doc mentions the pittsburgh pirates at least once every broadcast. if you haven’t noticed it before, you will now lol
Kell – as a chick who is super into football, my best advice if you really want to get invested and understand it (especially the NFL) is to get into a fantasy league. I first got into football in high school when my bf at the time made a secondary league with me and all his friends. Yes, your first year you’ll have no clue which players are good or how to put together a solid lineup, but after a few weeks of tracking your team you’ll start to learn both how scoring and points work, which teams/players are good, and the names of most of them. This helped me the best as I’m more of a hands-on learner, and could never have figured it out by just having my bf explain everything to me
My fiancé likes college football, unfortunately my fiancé likes Baylor Football.
Lemme help you out.
Step 1.) Stop watching the NFL
Step 2.) Watch any College Football game you can find. Its more fun.
Step 2A.) Actually I’m gonna walk that one back. Watch any Big 12 or Pac 12 game. Those are going to be fun no matter what.
No respect for some late night MACtion
Yeah there is no defense in those conferences so they are a bit more exciting to watch. But imo I think the Big Ten still plays the game it was meant to be played. I’ll never get tired of watching some pro-style offenses battling it out against solid defense.
I’m here to do a little self loathing, but if you think Ohio state plays the game the way it’s supposed to be played I have to disagree. Scoring a combined 16 points against Oklahoma and Clemson is so far from the way the game is supposed to be fucking played. DAMNIT
Half the teams in the big ten don’t run a pro style offense
True, but zero Big 12 teams run a pro offense or play defense (Chokelahoma’s one game vs Ohio State excluded, of course).
Don’t need to play defense when you score more than the other guy
I’ll admit the main reason I love football so much is I’ve been watching sec with my dad since I was about 5. But trying to learn it when you’re an adult is still possible- just treat it like a new hobby. Watch as many games as you can with people who are patient enough to explain the basics as you go along. I think once you actually learn the process from play calling to the final touchdown- you’ll be able to appreciate the game more (and it will be loads more fun to watch).
It could be worse, at least you’re not trying to learn to the rules and strategies of baseball.
Attempting to explain a balk is like attempting to explain astrophysics to a dog. I feel this hard
The comments here are so much better than over at TFM. Haven’t been over here at PGP in a long time.