The Football Fan's Manifesto

by Michael Tunison

  Where to start? There’s always the matter of them losing all sixteen of their games last season. That’s a good jumping off point.

  In twenty-one attempts, the team has never won a game at Washington. Their last victory on the road against the Redskins came in 1935, when the franchise was the Boston Redskins.

  Went three consecutive seasons (2001–2003) without a victory on the road, a first in NFL history.

  Barry Sanders, the greatest player in the history of this or perhaps any team, opted to retire at the age of thirty—when he could have played several more years and only needed about 1,500 yards to surpass Walter Payton’s career rushing record—rather than play any longer for such an utterly impotent organization.

  Suggested additional self-torture for Lions fans: Wear a throwback Matt Millen Raiders jersey to Ford Field.

  Cleveland Browns

  Like Detroit, enjoys a base of masochistically loyal supporters. Possessed an inopportune dynasty with Jim Brown, likely the greatest player ever, prior to the modern era. Better way too early than never, eh, Cleveland?

  Relevant Fail-toids

  A key contributor to the forty-five-year Cleveland sports title drought. Admittedly, the squalid town doesn’t bear the fertile soil needed for a championship yield.

  “Red Right 88” and “The Fumble.” While other teams give names to their successes (“The Catch”), the Browns memorialize their bitter failures.

  Lost the franchise to Baltimore in 1996. The Baltimore Ravens proceeded to win a Super Bowl four years later. Browns fans still picture Modell laughing at them when trying to have sex. Hopefully this prevents breeding.

  Suggested additional self-torture for Browns fans: Jump in the Cuyahoga River, light it on fire.

  VII.5 The Week Between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl Is the Tool of the Devil (as Well as the Networks, Which Are Run by the Devil)

  Among the more odious phenomena that blight the football landscape—besides the ever-present scourge of bandwagon fans and the fact that there are timeouts after scores and kick returns—is the two-week break between the conference championships and the Super Bowl. What purpose does this serve other than to dull the excitement that’s been building to a fever pitch throughout the playoffs? To hype the Super Bowl? Because surely the hundreds of millions of people who tune in to this cultural institution wouldn’t bother unless they had two full weeks of soft-focus player profiles and puff pieces crammed down their gullets. Nope. Not a one of them.

  Not only does the two-week break impose a needless calm in the middle of the frenzied postseason, it destroys any momentum a team may have built up through January, bores fans to tears, and hurts the quality of the Super Bowl itself. Only seven times in its forty-three-year history has the Super Bowl been held the week after the conference title games, with the margin of victory being noticeably smaller during the one-week games than the standard two-week ones.

  Of those seven Super Bowls, three of them were decided on the final play: Scott Norwood’s kick-starting four years of Bills Super Sunday suffering in January 1991; Kevin Dyson getting tackled a yard shy of the goal line in the Rams’ 23–16 victory in Super Bowl XXXIV; and Adam Vinatieri’s winning kick to complete the Patriots upset of those same Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI.

  The one-week games also give a fighting chance to the underdog, who, coming in with a full head of steam, has a legitimate shot against a daunting opponent. The Redskins’ 27–17 comeback win over the Dolphins in Super Bowl XVII, and Kansas City’s 23–7 upset victory over Minnesota in Super Bowl IV were examples of this. In fact, only two of the one-week games have been blowouts: Dallas’s 30–13 bludgeoning of Buffalo in Super Bowl XXVII (though the Bills led at halftime), and the last Super Bowl played with the one-week interim, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 48–21 victory over the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII (though the Raiders were four-point favorites entering the game).

  After holding three of the four Super Bowls between the 1999 and 2002 seasons with the one-week break, the league reestablished the two-week layover beginning with the 2003 season. There are plenty of rational arguments as to why the two-week break is detrimental to the big game, but none more so than that it’s excruciating torture for fans, an echo chamber of unsubstantial hype that political conventions could only ever dream to be.

  Moving the Pro Bowl to fill this gap, which will begin starting next year, does exactly nothing to alleviate the dull that settles in the lull. It just means even more players will opt to take the game off. And that the Pro Bowl, as devoid of meaning as it already is, will somehow become even more pointless.

  A two week buildup is an agonizing dog-and-pony show that’s nigh on unwatchable. For the first week, neither team has even arrived in the host city, forcing bloviating pundits to fill the vacuum with the sickliest scraps of rumor and warmed-over analysis to ratchet up the hype to obscene heights. Is a starting linebacker being limited in practice one day? Best sound the doomsday siren! Has a reserve player said in an interview that he’s confident in his team’s chances? Ooooooeeeee, that’s bulletin board material right there! Sounds like somebody’s guaranteeing a win! Will he be the next Namath? It’s enough to make you watch hockey.

  Eventually the second week rolls around and the teams make their arrival, an event which, in keeping with the shitshow nature of the two-week break, is breathlessly covered by the media. Footage of people walking on an airport tarmac has never been so captivating. Yet no network will refuse to show it like it’s massive breaking news, as though the prospect of air travel suddenly became doubly perilous with the coming of the Super Bowl.

  At some point the mayors of the participating cities (or, in the case of Jacksonville, sparsely civilized midden heaps) will wager items that are symbolic of their home-towns. If it’s Philadelphia, it’s probably a cheesesteak. If it’s Baltimore, it’s spent casings found at a crime scene. What’s most galling is that everyone looks the other way during this brazen disregarding of gambling laws. I should be able to wager foodstuff if I so choose. And if I instead substitute the money used to buy food in my bets, so be it. Innocent fun!

  On Tuesday of the second week comes Super Bowl Media Day, where the players are made available to the press, but only after they’ve been strictly admonished by their coaches not to say anything remotely interesting. Even the most charismatic player won’t do much more than taunt desperate reporters in need of a juicy quote. Every possible human interest story will be mined for copy, regardless of the player’s spot on the roster. Does a player have a crazy hobby or a sick relative? Well, they’re getting a fifty-inch profile in a Sunday paper somewhere around the country. To the relief of all involved, inevitably some wacky female foreign reporter will spice things up by showing up in a wedding dress and trying to propose to one of the quarterbacks. The QB politely demurs with a chuckle before taking her from behind in the hotel an hour later. Unless it’s Kurt Warner. He’ll just take her to Bible study.

  The bleakness of the off-season; it is where fandom goes to die and hope is crushed underfoot. It looms ever closer. So, as tedious as the extra week off is, you must savor it, no matter how forced the joy. In a few short weeks, you’ll kill even for this.

  VII.6 If You Need Don Cheadle to Motivate You for the Playoffs, You Aren’t a Fan

  Oh, la di da, loogit you, fan of a team that made it to the postseason. Aren’t you living high on the hog? Well, snaps to you, fortunate fanboy. Your team has succeeded in stumbling into the playoffs. They’re now only a few perilous clambering steps from the mountaintop. What are you willing to do to propel them the rest of the way?

  Can you rise to the occasion of the postseason? Are you prepared for an entire month of wearing the same lucky underwear, peeing on the same lucky bush, and jerking it to the same lucky picture of Lucy Pinder? Good. Because whatever’s been working for you throughout the year has to be your MO during the run to the Super Bowl. This is no time to waver in your routine. Every behavior from Mo
nday to Friday now becomes immutable from week to week. Let no amount of OCD be enough. The slightest deviation from your path could result in devastation.

  In January, your team is counting on you for no less than the totality of your being. That includes all of it, along with, like, your philtrum, duodenum, and mastoid process. Even the several pounds of beef sitting in your intestines that will never be fully digested. You gotta put that to work too. No free rides! You’ve poured four months of your life into seeing this team into contention, and now, once they’re at the doorstep of greatness, you must prove that your compulsion is strong enough to will them to the promised land.

  Think I’m exaggerating? Indeed, your very health is at stake. Earlier this year a team of researchers from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California discovered that death rates in Los Angeles rose significantly the day the Rams lost the Super Bowl in 1980 and dipped the day the Raiders won the title in 1984. Can’t poke holes in that methodology. It’s rock-solid proof! YOUR LIFE IS ON THE LINE! CHEER, CHEER FOR YOUR LIFE!

  Clichéd though the notion is, the truism stands that everything in the playoff is more intense. The pace is faster, the hits are harder, and fights in the stands are that much more likely to result in cracked crania. You too must respond in kind. Not for a moment should you let your guard down, and most definitely never let your beer down. Do you lose your voice for a day following a game? After a playoff game, it needs to move to three. With the season on the line each week from this point forward, nothing must impede the fan’s focus. Every conversation must revolve around the fortunes of the team, and all concerted effort must go to making sure you don’t invoke a dreaded jinx with a slip of the tongue that doesn’t include “if” prior to a hypothetical situation about the team winning.

  Have acquaintances who are fans of your team’s next-round opponent? It is incumbent upon you to disassociate with them as quickly and as acrimoniously as possible. It is useless to attempt otherwise. Any continued relations will be torn asunder well before kickoff in a flurry of argument spittle and hurt feelings. It’s better to call these things off before they get truly ugly. While regular season showdowns can be the stuff of friendly tiffs, playoff contests can drive an unbridgeable gap between the closest of relations. It just so happens that in January 1993, midway through the historic Bills comeback against the Oilers in the Wild Card game, a record three dozen marriages were dissolved as a direct result of the game. Granted, most of these were by virtue of murder-suicides committed by Oilers fans, but technically it holds true.

  A word of advice to the backers of top teams: a first-round bye is no time to rest on the laurels of an impressive regular season. Indeed, even with the brief reprieve from the pressures of a do-or-die contest, the Wild Card weekend is not one to be taken lightly by the fan of a dominant team. Recent years have shown that the extra week of rest can make players rusty and ill-prepared to face the high-intensity pace of playoff football. The same can be said of fans. So keep yourself in game shape by getting ready to detest whichever squad emerges from the first round. Pretend-berate people in public to see how your game is holding up. If you get them to flee for their lives, you know you’re getting where you need to be.

  There are no easy answers for full playoff readiness. It’s a tense, nerve-wracking experience for the fan, a trial for the senses. Some fans are clearly not ready for it and their inexperience shows. Remember Bengals fans after the 2005 season? They hadn’t seen their team in the post-season in fifteen years, and they weren’t able to keep from passing out long enough to see Carson Palmer’s ACL torn to ribbons. After that, it was lights out all around Paul Brown Stadium. Imagine everything you’re used to on a regular Sunday amped up to the nth degree. Except that you’re cheering for your very football lives. Remember, elimination is tantamount to being consigned to the purgatory of an early off-season, all while consequential football is still being played. Knowing what’s at stake, a grasp on sanity isn’t a luxury you can afford.

  7.7 Super Bowl Parties Are for Amateurs—but Still Worth It

  Super Bowl Sunday is to football what St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s Eve is to drinking: a nationally celebrated amateur hour. Everyone, whether they give a shit about the game or not, gathers around the TV for fellowship with friends at the altar of football’s biggest stage. This is the holy day when all Americans, no matter how football resistant they may be, have to pay their respects to Stitchface, the polytheist god of football fandom and cowhide leather.

  For many viewers, this is the only time all year they’re going to be watching a football game. And it shows. They’re only watching for the commercials, they declare, right before asking you what constitutes an illegal contact penalty. Be sure to demonstrate on their face. Sure, everyone is at least moderately interested in seeing the commercials, even if the vast majority of them are overlong, overly produced train wrecks brought down by the meddling hands of countless company execs. There’re a couple with a monkey. There’s five or six with a guy getting hit in the nuts. There’s one with a guy getting hit in the nuts by a monkey while Fergie laughs in the background. Lather, rinse, retire to the kitchen for a beer.

  Heaven forbid you actually have a vested interest in the game and be stuck in a crowd of casual or neutral viewers. You can’t do it. After the first ugly looks they shoot you for being loud you’ll want to burn the place down. Friends who know you from a non-sports context will want to discuss work or their lives or some other piddling shit you have no time for. The Super Bowl Party is a social event that has almost nothing to do with the game itself. Snubbing people on your Super Bowl Party guest list only because they lack a passion for the game is still considered every bit a harsh dismissal. Blowing them off for not bringing sufficiently good food or drinks is still blessedly legit, and therein you see where the casual football fan finds his use on this day: provider of grub.

  There is a way to remedy the dearth of interest in the outcome of the contest. Have the host collect an entry fee from each person who arrives. Assign an equal number of attendees to be considered ad-hoc fans of each participating team for that night. If it appears to be a lopsided matchup, have people draw the teams out of a hat to prevent them from bitching at you for sticking them with the eventual losers. The fans of the team that prevails on the field get the kitty at the end of the night. This ensures, at a very least, rapt attention paid toward the game itself and little unrelated socializing.

  Drinking games are also vital to the enjoyment of everyone on hand. These are difficult to create in the abstract without knowing which story lines broadcasters will ceaselessly cram down viewers’ throats throughout the duration of the game. Worry not, you’ll know them well in advance of the day of the game, as the NFL commentariat will have already been droning on about the grand conflict that looms over the contest for a week and change. And God help you if a star player has announced that the Super Bowl will be his final game, as John Elway and Jerome Bettis have done in the past. Basing your drinking game on mentions of that will render you dead from alcohol poisoning well before the seven-hour pregame show hits its halfway mark.

  Another grating element to the Super Bowl is the metric assload of advertisers who refer to it as “the big game” in their product pushes. Naturally, there’s a reason for this and it has to do with fat-ass sacks of cash. You see, the NFL has an exclusive trademark on the term Super Bowl and other phrases associated with the game, and its team of intellectual property rights lawyers isn’t exactly keen on other companies employing those terms for commercial uses. In fact, the league tried to copyright “the Big Game” as well to no avail in June 2007. Enforcement of name usage isn’t the NFL’s only battleground, though. The league has tried to block church congregations from watching the game on mammoth TV screens, arguing that public exhibitions on screens larger than fifty-five inches are damaging to ratings. In many of these areas, the league has been successful in protecting its brand, even if it comes at the
price of negative press.

  Still, even if the people you have to watch the game with are clueless, the commercials suck, and the halftime show only appeals to geriatrics with poor taste in music, it’s still an awesome spectacle to behold and, if it happens to be a good game, it can provide the height of the season’s drama. Seeing a dramatic finish with the league’s grandest prize on the line is just the thing to get you fired up for another season to kick off. Right. Fucking. Now. Except, screw you sideways, it’s not coming until September and you’ve got seven Stitchface-forsaken months of barren baseball-filled spring and summer wasteland to occupy before that happens. Surviving the off-season is going to require a little help and a lot of drugs.

  7.8 Celebrate a Title, Bitches!

  Seeing your favorite team be victorious in the Super Bowl produces a feeling superior even to having an orgasm while you’re stoned and watching your worst enemy drown in an enclosed tank of raw sewage. It really is that good. I might even be understating it. Yet polite society demands that we list our happiest moments in life as personal, family-type things, like the first time you meet your significant other or the birth of your children, but that’s a bunch of treacly Hallmark horseshit. Your team’s first title trumps both of those by about a parsec. Subsequent titles are ahead as well, though that distance is measured by mere light-years.

  Once the initial delirium-fueled shrieking subsides, and you’ve emptied your tear ducts awkwardly onto the shoulder of the person next to you, it’s time to launch into some serious celebration. You didn’t suffer this long to settle for some light merriment. No, you’re entitled, nay, obligated to tear the goddamn roof off and cause a ruckus. Because who knows if you’ll ever get the opportunity again. Chances are you might not. You can’t squander a situation that allows for socially acceptable mayhem. That goes beyond fan law. That’s some fundamental life shit right there.