For years, I’ve prided myself – silently – on all the time I’ve saved by not watching football.
“Why bother?” I’ve asked myself. “By the next day, the big plays have been YouTubed 547 times, and someone who understands what just happened, has explained it all in excruciating detail. In less than a minute, I will know the play was just like one the San Francisco 49ers pulled off back in 1975.”
Until now, I have hidden my football ignorance/disinterest fairly well from all but my younger (football enthusiast) son. For years, he has made a habit of outing me with bizarre inquiries, such as “What do you think of the West Coast Spread?” It is not, as I thought, a California buffet.
He still recalls my Sunday bet that Georgia Tech would win a game they’d already lost on Saturday. But I’ve managed to keep the rest of the world in the dark.
My camouflage efforts have been clever. I have a Buckeyes flag waving in my front yard. And their schedule – always posted on my refrigerator during the season – suggests that I plan my life around their games. This is true, sort of. I faithfully stay off Route 315 for hours till the game starts, and start running errands immediately after kickoff.
I have not gone so far as a friend who enters all their games – home and away – on her calendar, though it’s probably a good idea.
A football errand-runner herself, she’s not committing to watch the games, just trying to be socially appropriate.
“You don’t want to be caught suggesting dinner out on the night of a game,” she explained.
Still, confessing to non-football-watching has its downsides. My son unfairly equates my disinterest to an inability to “just hang out.” This is not true. I am simply showing deference to those who need to focus on the game full on.
This became clear years ago in Shaker Heights when we lived in a small area where the Browns’ home games were somehow “grandfathered in” for viewing on a local channel.
Suddenly, we had friends we never knew we had, piling into our family room, bringing potluck dishes – all fun and delicious – except that my constant “What just happened?” chatter quickly had me banned to the shopping mall.
I suppose It was then that the errand-running began. I was hardly missed when I headed out to fill my grocery cart in a store as empty as a keg at the end of a tailgate. On a good day, I managed to buy a week’s worth of groceries, fill the car with gas and go shoe-shopping, all before half-time.
Still, with all this efficiency, I must confess that all the time I’ve saved not watching football gets squandered these days watching cable news – a phenomenon I’m not proud of but which proves I’m completely capable of hanging out.
Here too, I find myself asking my friends “What just happened?” But unlike football fans, they don’t seem to mind. This would seem to make cable news the perfect spectator sport except that after several hours of intrigue it’s hard to get to sleep.
The other night, when it was all too much, I changed the channel and stared ahead at football for about seven minutes, till I nodded off.
Could be, it’s the perfect sport for me after all.
Copyright 2019 Pat Snyder
