Learn the specifics of the stadium. It’s not difficult to find season ticket holders at any stadium willing to dump seats to visitors, even for the biggest of games. That said, there are those who would unsurprisingly exploit your ignorance for their gain. That means selling you marked-up seats with a view obstructed by a pillar. Or planetesimal-sized fans. It’s a scumbag thing to do, but you have it coming if you’re not well-schooled on where you’re going. So do a little homework, or push the passed-out guy in the next row out of his unobscured seats. He won’t notice until well after the game is over. And by then he’ll be more occupied with fishing his face out of the layer of sludge on the ground.
Careful with the illegal behavior. What you can get away with at the home stadium is far different than what you can do elsewhere. There’s nothing home fans like more than ratting out fans of the visiting team, no matter how seemingly innocuous their behavior. Naturally, the ushers are only too happy to comply with their demands, not to mention rough you up for their enjoyment. Concealed cameras on your person are a boon to your lawyer after you get your collarbone snapped.
Beware the bathrooms. Other than the parking lots, this is where the majority of visitor fan beatings take place. So I would recommend not using them at all. Pissing yourself may be the greatest defense you can employ against the savagery of the opposition. Who wants to get close enough to a guy reeking of urine to clobber him? Streaks of feces under your eyes also send a message to potential inflictors of pain.
ARTICLE IV
The Two-Minute Driven Life
IV.1 You Can’t Have a Tailgate of One
The human mind, conditioned over the course of millennia spent enduring without football, is hardwired to seek out the comforting presence of others. It made sense to need people when humankind was floundering aimlessly in search of purpose. Neighbors, friends, and loved ones provided welcome relief to the existential crisis that wracked a sports fan without a real sport.
With football now discovered and flourishing, the elusive purpose has been found, yet our dependence on the acceptance of others lingers. We could perfectly exist on our own with our TV and our shrines to our favorite team, content to interact with other fans only on gameday. A shame that we remain victims of an outmoded primal urge that one day evolution will hopefully expunge. Until that day comes, we are bound to deal with our cumbersome need to belong.
Satisfying this biological need entails a circle of friends, presumably of the drinking-buddy sort, maintaining at least tenuous relations with our relatives and, because the species demands it, finding a mate and starting a family. Anyone can tell you it’s far more work than it’s worth, but you really have no say in the matter.
The rigmarole to starting and keeping these relations in place is a trying one. Among the tedium you’re facing down are the tasks of getting an education, holding down a respectable job, and keeping a good faith effort at personal hygiene. Some part of every fan would be content to be the bum with a bottle of booze sleeping on top of a warm grate. But society dictates that this is not an acceptable lifestyle, and before long, you will want to feel embraced by your peers. That, and among the homeless it’s getting increasingly difficult to stake out a good vantage point near storefront TV displays come kickoff. You’ve got to be on your game about that.
In the end, it’s a lot to put yourself through for what amounts to be a great deal of aggravation most of the time. The people in your life will give you hell, but on some level, you’re going to need them around. The social circle isn’t all bad, after all. It helps to have a support system in place for the times when your favorite team falls tragically short, or even more miserably, nowhere close, and you need someone to talk you back from the ledge.
Now if you could only get one of them to make a goddamn beer run for you. And get out of your face for three hours a week.
4.2 Make the Game Part of Your Game: Picking Up Women
There’s no drunken hookup like a random celebratory football fan hookup. Both man and woman are feeding off emotion, wanting to extend the high of a win or mollify the low of a loss. And people naturally become more attractive if they’re fans of your favorite team.
Some fan bases are more attractive than others. A fan of the Jaguars, Packers, Vikings, Ravens, Texans, Rams, Steelers, Lions, Colts, Titans, or Browns? Then the pool of attractive ladies among your crowd is pretty thin. The odds aren’t working in your favor. But then, beggars can’t be choosers. Or so they say. Nevertheless, don’t despair, no matter how many times you may be striking out. It makes you look meek, which translates to tragically undesirable in a football crowd.
Football, of course, is a team sport, and so too is hollering at chicks. Both require intense calculation, a high threshold of pain and ass-slapping. The first among your needs is a quality wingman, whom you are free to consider your lineman. Or your blocking back, depending on what kind of offense you’re trying to run or which you consider less homoerotic. That wingman must excel at occupying the edges, picking off any of the friends protecting your desired woman’s blindside. If your wingman can also lie really convincingly on your behalf, you might want to give him the franchise tag.
Given a clear shot at your target, bring forth the full force of your charms. Draw from the same well of energy you use to get drunker and louder during the playoffs. If you won your fantasy league title last year, now’s the time to let her know. Women respect success in all its forms. Did you recently place high in a Madden tournament? You should keep a few screenshots of final scores in your wallet. Good as pussymagnets, those.
Though this interaction is offensive in nature, you must be defensive in temperament. The picking up of women is like the delicate dance between a defensive back and a receiver. You must think of yourself as the cornerback. You try as best as you can to keep up with receivers, anticipating their moves, pressing them off the line and back into the bar, all the while making sure not to make contact before the time is right. Strike too soon and you’ll draw a flag, which in all likelihood manifests itself as a kick to the balls.
Many times you will be called upon to be a wingman yourself. You are part of the team after all, and any carry you get is countered with time spent on special teams. Be prepared to give up your whole body for the cause. You’re springing your man for a score. All you had to do was get pancaked by a three-hundred-pound defensive lineman, or, more literally, the three-hundred-pound friend of the targeted girl.
It can seem so intimidating, this sordid little routine. Luckily, Internet dating can be an attractive alternative to this danse macabre. Best of all, Internet dating is quickly losing its stigma as a refuge for the awkward and the ugly. That means one thing for you: searching diligently for women wearing your favorite team’s jersey in their profile picture. A tattoo of the team logo is also acceptable. Like information on a team’s roster, facts can be embellished in your profile. If elfish receiver Antwaan Randle El can be listed at five foot ten, there’s no reason you can’t list your income as “over $250,000.”
Should you succeed in sealing the deal, celebrate in a manner not unlike you do after a team score, replete with “good game” ass pats and spilling beer on her. Then give a wide berth to the girl you hooked up with at the bar for the remainder of the season. Good as fandom lays can be, relationships can seldom take bloom in that setting. Before long you find the intensity rarely matches the energy that first drove you together. Or the drunkenness.
4.3 Convenient Conditioning for the Football Fatty
It’s no secret that the sedentary, gorging lifestyle of the average football fan isn’t the healthiest to which you could subject yourself. Minus a concerted effort at proper personal care, the constant ingestion of greasy food and the endless supply of alcohol—all done while sitting on your ass—could turn a healthy, svelte individual into Jared Lorenzen in the span of only a few months.
Caring about one’s appearance has commonly been derided in fan circles as the mark of the effete, bu
t it’s important to have self-respect. Especially for trash-talking purposes. A fan base full of lardasses opens itself up to easy mocking from the supporters of other teams, not to mention endless inquiries as to whether they plan on finishing a food item.
Moreover, as much as unwatchable sitcoms on CBS may have convinced you otherwise, you can’t be a slovenly mess and hope to attract a good woman who puts up with you. No, you’ve got to put forward a modicum of effort to keep yourself semi-presentable. That or become obscenely wealthy. Your call.
Should you decide on fitness, a few simple strategies, easily incorporated into your regular sloth-filled routine, can produce dramatic results.
For every six regular beers you drink, have a low-calorie one. It’ll trick your metabolism into thinking you’re trying to lose weight, thus kicking it into high gear. Either that or the horrible taste will make you swear off drinking for a round or two.
Hide the remote. No, it won’t force you to get up and change the TV manually more often, but it will force you to yell for someone else to do it. And yelling has to burn at least a few calories, right?
Eat work-intensive foods like crab legs or sunflower seeds. They require so much effort, you’ll think of eating as a chore and won’t want to do it at all. That is, unless some enterprising merchant is selling sunflower nutmeat. Then you is screwed.
Stop eating your weight in bacon paste. It’s probably for the best. And not just because your heart stopped pumping an hour ago. Your resulting gas will also melt the eye membranes of those nearby.
There is no such thing as victory cake. Neither is there first-down cake. Nor blocked punt returned for a touchdown cake.
Don’t pee into a soda bottle. Getting up once in a while to visit an actual bathroom burns fat and is a much more sanitary option. At the very least find a large bush. Sure, peeing into the bottle saves time and provides you a projectile to chuck at a Titans fan, but it’s disgusting. And likely causing you to put pee-soiled hands on your other food articles.
Limit yourself to one pound of wings per quarter. Any more than that and you’re talking more hot meat injections than Jeff Garcia.
For every lineman who scores, waddle in place for five minutes. If one fat guy can move his ass for a little bit, surely you can do the same. You can even reward yourself with some jumping-jacks cake after you’re finished.
Gastric bypass surgery. No one said you had to do it the honest way.
Utilizing these small measures, you’ll keep yourself from becoming an unsightly amorphous blob, instead staying a charmingly paunchy glutton. No one wants the clap of their thighs to overmatch those of their hands.
IV.4 The Diner Quiz for a Post-Post-Diner Generation
The 1982 Barry Levinson film Diner is best remembered for the scene in which a young man gets his girlfriend to touch his penis by concealing it in a popcorn box at the movies which later served as the inspiration for the Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg song “Dick in a Box” (as seen in that movie with Daniel Stern).
A more critical segment for our purposes occurs later in the film when Eddie, played by Steve Guttenberg, subjects his fiancée, Elyse, to a rigorous examination of her football knowledge. Nothing much, just 140 or so questions on arcane gridiron facts. Elyse hangs tough, but in the end finishes with 63 percent correct, falling just short of the 65 percent mark required to pass. If this strikes you as draconian, you clearly married out of desperation, intoxication, or on a dare. Maybe all three. Gauging the football acumen of a potential mate is an all-important determinant in the courting process. Otherwise, your betrothed may be a concealed non-sports-fan, one who has merely cannily constructed a clever façade until the ring gets on her finger. You’d be stuck. Maybe even for months before the divorce was finalized.
That said, Diner is a Hollywood movie and, as such, gets several critical details glaringly wrong. For one, quizzing football fans on stats and trivia is a largely pointless tactic. Stats are only important insofar as they can help our fantasy teams. Slavish reliance on statistics for sports enjoyment is the realm of baseball dorks. It’s all they have. Without statistics, baseball would have nothing but the overbearing crush of nostalgia and wacky mascot races. And if they could quantify nostalgia, they’d get Bill James to create a stat for it in a heartbeat.
Football, on the other hand, is chiefly about emotion, often frighteningly intense and wildly erratic emotion. That’s why you must craft your test on personal experience over objective truths. This may seem to feed into the perception that football is not as intellectually stimulating a sport as others, but that ignores a categorical fact: FOOTBALL’S JUST PLAIN AWESOME, DOUCHECANOE. WOOOO!
Therefore, asking her for descriptions of the first game she attended, how she became a fan, and the most painful loss she ever experienced is more revealing and instructive than whether she knows which college some random player attended. If you’re concerned that such queries will be more difficult to score, fear not.
IV.4. A THE FOOTBALL MANIFESTO MATE-MATCHING METRIC
The first order of business is figuring out where you’re going to conduct this examination. Any number of forbidding, intimidating venues could conceivably work, though there’s a certain amount of jolting verisimilitude to setting up a table on the 50-yard line of a high school football field and having friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and ex-boyfriends fill the stands. Or, you know, if you want to make it racy as opposed to clinical (the NFL would not approve), you could always opt for an actual classroom and her in a naughty schoolgirl outfit. One thing Diner got right was the refusal of bathroom breaks during the proceedings. The last thing you need in a significant other is someone who’s going to drag you out of your seat during a two-minute drill. Unlike in the movie, you should be as generous as possible with any water she requests. You’re really going to want to test that bladder. A nearby slowly dripping faucet is a nice touch.
In many ways, you have to look at this like it’s a football tryout. Most football players who reach the NFL have the physical attributes to excel. The same is true with potential spouses. It’s character issues that determine who flies or falters. If you’ve gotten to this point, you should have some sense of what the person is like in the sack, so that needn’t be part of this examination. Besides, once you get married, you won’t be getting laid anyway, so you might as well figure out how much suffering you should expect beforehand. Consider this the wifely Wonderlic.
A composite score will be produced based on performance in eight football-pertinent fields:
1. Trash-talking: Demand she write a thousand-word essay on why hers is the best team in the league. If that team is not your own, immediately dock her points. Score for creative use of invective and cheap slurs. If she writes in all capital letters, you probably met her on the Internet. If that’s the case, just be happy a woman showed up.
2. Passion: Insult the starting quarterback or head coach of her favorite team. Immediately provide her with a mannequin. Time her on how long it takes her to dismember it. Anything over twenty seconds isn’t marriage material. Impose five seconds of penalty time for each eyeball not gouged out. Remind yourself to never do that again.
3. Patience: Sit her down for a conversation with Chad Ocho Cinco. If she can stand his nonsensical musings for five minutes, she’s willing to deal with anything.
4. Appearance: You know what’s hotter than a girl who knows a lot about football? How about one who’s just hot? Sacrilege, I know, but the last thing you want to end up with is a female Packers fan. Sure, the various cheeses she feeds you will be delicious, but good luck peeling a woman the size of Gilbert Brown off you in the morning.
5. 40 Time: Clock her time in the 40-yard dash. This shouldn’t factor into your decision, but it will probably be fun to watch.
6. Pink Jerseys: Does she own one? If so, run. Now! Stop reading! Move!
7. Punctuality: Request a beer. You may be in the middle of a field with no refrigerator in sight, but the truly dedicat
ed will find a way around this. The average commercial break is about two minutes, so make this your cutoff time. Anything over that mark is an automatic fail. Ditto if the beer she brings you is a Coors Light.
8. Is She Actually Submitting to This Test?: Diner was a movie released in the ’80s that was depicting life in the ’50s. Women were considerably more subservient in those days, so much so that they might actually put up with a bullshit exam like this. Women ain’t having it nowadays, playboy. So if you find one willing to undergo this charade, it probably means she loves you. Just marry her already, you dumb fuck. Like anyone else is going to put up with you.
IV.5 The Obligatory Guidelines for Female Fans
Women have made startling progress in football fandom. So much so that the definition of who is a football fan is quickly and dramatically changing. Football, more than any other major sport, has long been considered the province of the penile persuasion. Women, so went the conventional wisdom, would never be interested in a sport where people violently flung themselves into each other, or at least one in which Oprah didn’t play a prominent role. However, with each passing year, more women have proven their bloodlust is as strong as that of men. The road to female fan proliferation was not an easy one, especially considering how much of the language of fandom is so heavily cloaked in misogyny. Male football fans often express their disapproval of a player or a rival by calling that person a “bitch,” “pussy,” “pussybasket,” “crotch pheasant,” “twatblossom,” “cockwallet,” “fucktaster,” or another such term of endearment.
If you’re a female fan, you’re bound to get harassed a few thousand times per game. Unlike baseball fans, who are polite to the point of dithering, football fans aren’t shy about obnoxiously and drunkenly coming on to you.
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