gridiron confessions part 2

So, now you know I am a football hooligan in a cunning disguise. Let's talk about teams now. I don't necessarily hold with the fact that you HAVE to like the team in the city where you live. That is just geography. I think you can cheer for whoever you want to cheer for, and it doesn't matter where you might live.

I live in the Chicago suburbs. Therefore, by rights, my team should be the Bears. And I've tried this. I have. I mentioned the '85 Bears in my last post. I watched the game. Since then, though, they have caused me nothing but heartache, so I've started scouting around for other teams (plus, you know, blue and orange? yuck.). I flirted with many teams, trying to find the right one. In my early days, I liked the Giants (I think that this is because my love of NYC began very early, and anything associated with it automatically became cool. This did not hold true of the Jets, though, for some reason. Giants = cool, Jets = thugs. That's the way it is.), the Raiders (cute logo! arrrghhh!), the Dolphins (pretty teal uniforms!) and a few others. My first major team crush though, was the Cowboys. I was in high school and I was bat shit crazy about the Dallas Cowboys. I don't know why. It was fun to watch Troy Aikman throw and Emmit Smith run. They were good. They were all-American. They were Cowboys.

Plus, it really annoyed this guy I went to school with, who was part of the group I hung with. So, after awhile, I just wore my Cowboys gear (oh yes, I had gear) on Mondays just to annoy him. He liked the 49ers who had a big rivalry with the Cowboys (at least, our rivalry was big). Whenever the 49ers would lose, I would say something to him about it like "24-17, huh? That sucks.". And if the 'Boys lost, he'd come and quote scores and records at me. And I'd say something awesome like "At least they aren't the 49ers." (I didn't have The Knowledge that I spoke of in the last post. That came later.)

But that phase ended. I broke up with the Cowboys and now I think they are obnoxious. I always got a lot of crap for liking them anyway (my dad called them "Cowpies" just to annoy me. Now I call them that too.). So it was back to the Bears for a while. But they are problematic. Like the ex-boyfriend you keep going back to. It's good for a while, and then they fall back into their same old asshole-ish habits. So I scouted for a new team. For a while it was the Colts (I mean, Peyton Manning, come on! Awesome!) but then they tanked. If I wanted to support a losing team, I'd just stick with the heartbreaking Bears, you know?

I know, I know, that's fairweather fan-ish. You have to take the good with the bad, and support them no matter what. But it's been too many times with the Bears, you know? What's a girl to do?

So I'm on the hunt for a new team. I like the Giants, obviously, and the Saints. I liked the Lions for a while, too, so I guess we'll see.

gridiron confessions

I am a football hooligan. This may come as a surprise to the people who think of me as a sweet, quiet, foreign film watching, vampire series reading, broadway music listening culture princess who loves to shop. But it's true.

It began quite early, you see. I was 7 years old in 1985 when the Bears went to the Super Bowl. I knew all of the players in the starting lineup AND all the words to the Super Bowl Shuffle. I didn't know anything about the game then, but my parents were into it, and I was too. We also started spending Super Bowl Sunday with friends of my parents. I would eat chili and play with their cute toy poodle, but sometimes there was nothing else to do but pay attention to the game. And so I learned things. It was more fun to me to understand what was going on - it helped, too, during Thanksgiving when most of the day was spent with chips and dip in front of the tv. My dad took part in pools in the places where he worked, and one day, for fun, we decided to do it at home, too.

I picked teams for the stupidest of reasons, I liked the color of their uniforms, or they had a cute player, or I liked their city. The funny thing was, a lot of the times, I picked correctly, without even knowing anything about anything. We used to play for money, but now it's just for fun. (And no, I don't pick them like that anymore. I read the papers and look up stats and stuff like that). My parents are kind of amused, because I will sit in front of a game with them, sometimes I'll read, or sometimes I'll knit or whatever, just listening to what's going on, and watching, if it is super interesting, and then later, I can have actual knowledgeable football conversations. It's a little bit dazzling, because it is, I think, so unexpected. Here's an example, one day this past winter, my dad was wondering if a coach had ever been fired mid-season, and I answered, yes, that Vikings guy was fired last year before Thanksgiving. I didn't remember his name (looked it up later - Brad Childress) - it just soaks in. My parents were suitably dazzled. I don't know where it comes from. I'll just pick things up, like, subliminally, and they get stored in a little football brain folder, ready to be accessed again at a suitably appropriate time.

So last night, I was in front of the tv, watching the game, and transformed from sweet, quiet regular me into crazy, football hooligan me, yelling at the screen, clapping when the Giants made a good move and booing heartily when the Patriots did just about anything. It was crazy. It makes a difference, of course, when I actually like one of the teams playing. Last year, I was like, yawwwwnnn, whatever, Packers, who cares, bring on the commercials!

I have never actually been to a game, but really want to go to one. Like, a pre-season one. I am not so dedicated that I will sit around in freezing temps, to watch these guys run around. I know that makes it more authentic or something, but whatever.

So now you know my secret.