Confessions of a Football Illiterate

When Lance and I were dating, I spent many Sundays with his family watching football. Though the games started with food and discussion, they always ended with an intense focus on the TV paired with yelling at the men in tight pants over their ability to handle the ole’ pigskin. There I sat, amidst all this, calculating in my mind the hours we would have left for shopping when the game finally ended.*

*On the occasions the game went into overtime, you can imagine the panic that ensued.

Commercials became a reason to smile and the clock was my only focus during the game.*

*Upon one of my first clock staring days, I was greatly disappointed to discover that the clock was not the ultimate game clock and that there are four quarters to a game. The delight I experienced when the clock reached zero was quickly snuffed out when a new quarter’s time appeared.

There are some sports I can pretend to be interested in. I actually attended basketball games during high school and, for some reason, to this day I enjoy baseball games. But football is and never will be something I latch onto.

Don’t get me wrong. I have tried. There were times I asked questions. Times I listened intently to what was being said, yet found that my eyes were rolling into the back of my head similar to the way they did during my high school civics class.*

*I’m sorry, Brother Newman. It had nothing to do with your teaching, and everything to do with my lack of interest in the subject.

I don’t know if it is the multiple facets of the game, the limitless jargon involved, or simply the fact that I wasn’t born into a football loving family that makes it so difficult for me to give a hoot about the game. My problem, in case you haven’t realized it yet, is that I married a man who loves the game.

I suppose every couple has their differences. In our first year of marriage, I tried to teach Lance to play the piano. In his first time sitting before the piano, he tried for about five minutes, then declared his fingers were too big to make it work.

Really?

I have sort of taken that approach to football. However, instead of using a nonsense excuse like large fingers* my reasoning is that every time I am forced to watch football, I feel this pounding in my brain, leading me to assume that football is toxic to me.

*Hello, plenty of men play the piano!

Still, yes, I watched some of this year’s Super Bowl*. I even picked the correct winning team despite Hubby’s choice to go for Carolina.**

*The entire first half.

**I was basing my decision almost completely on the fact that I like the color orange.

I get no pleasure in not sharing something my husband enjoys so much and do what I can to bite my lip and suffer through the pain of Sunday games and multiple fantasy football teams knowing that soon it will be all over. I will have months and months where I no longer need to share my husband with football and the boring mumble of sports commentators no longer pours from my living room surround sound.

Still I find this need to share my imperfection with you so that you know I indeed have suffered this past weekend and have used one of my passions to cope with it: Food.

Though we didn’t have an all out, knock your socks off Super Bowl party, we had a few friends over, which meant cooking. Somehow focusing on creating an elaborate spread and then enjoying it helped push me through to the halftime show.

I suppose the moral of this story is to add food to whatever bad situation you are facing. You’ll still have to face it, but at least you’ll have a yummy plate to get you through.*

*And let’s be honest, Lady Gaga’s powerful execution of the National Anthem was the real highlight of that game.