Chapter 1. What's Love Got to Do With It?

by Bob Andelman

"We were in Chicago for a wedding in 1984 and just happened to be booked at the same hotel that the Chicago Bears were staying at. We rode up in the elevator with four or five of the Bears. Walter Payton was particularly outgoing and he talked to my daughter, who was about 2, and asked if he could hold her. He threw her up in the air and caught her and that was a real magic moment for me. While I'm sure Walter Payton wouldn't remember that 10 minutes after it happened, it certainly was a defining moment for me. I'll never forget it. From that moment forward whenever Walter Payton had a great day I was able to feel like he was a good friend of mine."

Dr. Rick Weinberg
Clinical psychologist
University of South Florida, Tampa

Men love a lot of things: Mom. America. Big dogs. Hardware stores.

And football.

Football puts the bite on us for four quarters and tosses us around like a terrier taunting a live catch. We're in its teeth, up in the air, on our backs. We're being shaken, not stirred. It's the ride of our lives and we haven't even left the living room couch.

Somehow, we're both Troy Aikman going back to throw the pigskin and Emmitt Smith leaping high on the 2-yard-line to catch the ball and landing in the end zone. We're doing the dance, slapping high- and low-fives.

Sometimes we're on the sidelines, playing coach, barking plays to the defense. Don't get caught deep! Look for the sneak! Don't let 'em get outside!

If a guy can't be on the field playing or coaching football, the second-best thing is to be in the stands or on the couch, watching. Our egos are so tied to sports that if we can't be playing, we want to watch. (We're like that when it comes to sex, too, if you hadn't noticed.)

Any bored and angry woman who's ever glared in futility at a man glued to a divisional playoff game knows this. Just listen to what we say: "Yes! Yes!! YES!!!" or "Aw, SHIT! GODDAMNMOTHERFRIGGIN-SONUVABITCH!DAMNITALLTOHELLICAN'TBELIEVEIT!" Or watch our body language, the way our hands instinctively reach out to snag a pass or scoop up a fumble, the way we pull at an imaginary helmet to signal a face mask violation.

We don't just watch football. We live it.

We become a part of the action, spending three hours every Sunday afternoon and Monday night on a rocket ride with the stars.

There is some envy at work here, too, because we say to each other or ourselves, "Oh, God, would I love to do that!" Or, "I could play that position as well as that guy!"

In football, we see people beat and tackled. For some of us, aggression is part of it. But it's really a matter of personal glory. We'd desperately like to do the end zone shuffle after a touchdown.

Take Roger Brummett, for example. He's vice president of marketing for a human resources management firm in Carmel, Indiana. He played ball in high school, tried out in college as a walk-on and blew out his knee. A good stake in his devotion to the Indianapolis Colts stems from his dreams of what could have been.

"It's a game that if I could have, I would have played all my life," Brummett says. "I mean, why do even bad golfers play every weekend? There's something that stirs their competitive nature. Watching those games on Sundays is an association of a dream that lets us reach out and touch a venue we would have liked to have participated in."

Psychologists talk about it in terms of transference. Players look in the stands and see fans with fingers up in the air, saying, "We're No. 1! We're No. 1!"

"There is a phrase that sometimes is used -- 'The whistle never blew'," says Dr. Robert L. Arnstein, retired chief psychiatrist of Yale University Health Services. "The implication is that the whistle never blew in a player's final game and he has gone through life playing the game over and over again. Supposedly one of the Yale football coaches once said that, 'You are going out to play Harvard in 10 minutes and never again will you ever do anything so important in your life'."

We see football differently than other sports. Football portrays us the way we are. Aggressive, action-oriented, manipulative. Baseball, on the other hand, portrays the way we think we once were or that we would like to be. Thoughtful, deliberate, patient. Boring.

"The question is not really why people like football," says Dr. Allen L. Sack, a professor of sociology and coordinator of the sports management program at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. "It is, why are men more involved in it? Men and women are involved in a wide variety of other activities but here is one that is primarily male. It is the biggest sport in the U.S. that is for men only -- little boys only. When those little boys grow up they are a built-in market for professional football.

"In terms of participation," he says, "it is little boys that are more likely to be involved or to think about football than little girls. I think that men in their 40s and mid-life can look back and remember what it was like for them to be involved in the game. They can appreciate some of the nuances that other people -- including most women -- may not."

All men come to their football obsession differently. There are at least 20 reasons spelled out in the following pages, connecting our love of the game to everything from the influence of our fathers (Chapter 3: "Cat's in the Cradle") and the need for male bonding (Chapter 9: "Every Picture Tells a Story") to military training (Chapter 8: "Achtung, Baby") and beer commercials (Chapter 20: "Bud Bowling for Dollars").

Some of us prefer the thrill of seeing the game in person (Chapter 17: "Two Tickets to Paradise"), while others content themselves with a TV, a well-stocked refrigerator and the comfort of their own home (Chapter 18: "57 Channels").

Men drive women away from football by our symbiotic link to the sport. We don't want to explain the sport, even to those females who might be actually learn it. It's the last thing on this chauvinistic planet that's still exclusively ours, damn it, ours! Women can't play it and we're not going to encourage you to start. (Chapter 21: "She's No Lady, She's My Wife.")

Not that we don't love the women in our lives. We certainly do. But sometimes a man wants to get his piece of the action in a different way. Football provides a multitude of means: hero worship (Chapter 5: "A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich"), violence (Chapter 11: "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"), skill (Chapter 12: "Fly Like An Eagle"), statistics (Chapter 14: "Odds 'n Sods"), gambling (Chapter 15: "You Better, You Bet"), escapism (Chapter 20: "The Man Who Fell to Earth").

But above all else, football is about the dreams and aspirations of boys (Chapter 2: "Boy's Life"), the way our jaws go slack in awe of spectacular feats of physical daring and courage, the way we gape in wide-eyed wonderment at seeing the best athletes strap on the pads and kick some ass.

That's why we love football.

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 3. Cat's in the Cradle

by Bob Andelman

"I'm going to keep an open mind. I'm not going to force my sons to be Gators or Dolphins fans. But I expect they'll pick it up. I'm not going to pick their schools for them at 5 and 3 years old. I want them to go to Yale and Harvard. Unless they can play. Then I definitely want them to go to Florida."

Harold Hyman
Property manager
Tamarac, Florida

Football became an American family tradition the morning after the first quarterback tossed the first touchdown pass and a sportswriter published the play-by-play.

Few games move as aggressively from father to son and brother to brother. Seeing his son score a touchdown for the first time in a Pop Warner League game is a much more satisfying rite of passage to most fathers than potty training. (And football uniforms are entirely more manly to clean than diapers.)

Some men live their own football dreams vicariously through strangers on their favorite college or pro team. And some dads are pretty overt about proselytizing to their sons about their own football careers, usually to the point of exaggeration (and leaving out the downside such as injuries), pushing them biceps-first into football. Not a one wouldn't wish their own flesh and blood to have the agility of Jerry Rice, the strength of Reggie White or the precision of Warren Moon.

If that fails, dads will settle for a knowledgeable companion to share the game watching experience.

"My dad, when he was 10, was at the first Packers game ever played," Green Bay banker Jerry Pigeon says proudly. "You look up to your parents. He would go to the games and we wanted to go, too. My brother and I, growing up in the '60s, the Lombardi era, were brainwashed. We grew up supporting the team. Now my brother has one room in his house that's all dedicated to the Packers. He's got files or videos of every game, newspapers from every city the Packers played in. He's into it."

Unlike the Pigeon brothers, a lot of men might not know why they like football. They may reason that Dad played or older brothers played or they saw it on TV. But that is not a one-to-one relationship; not everybody's father or older brother played football. It is not an automatic thing. Therefore, football must resonate good feelings.

Sometimes it's inexplicable because it's on an unconscious level. That starts because kids are very sensitive to their parents' wishes. Dad's subtle interest in things like that, they always pick up. You might call it "psychological genetics." It sets the stage for later on, when men continue to both play the game or vicariously enjoy it. It continues to be an avenue of discharge for the aggressive drive.

There is a fairly strong body of literature in the sport sociology field that indicates that parents are incredibly significant in socializing children into particular sports. Most kids play Pee Wee football because their dads bring them down and sign them up. It's not often that a 6-year-old kid says, "Dad, I want to go to fencing school," or, "Dad, I would like to play lacrosse" -- unless dear old dad fenced or played lacrosse. Parents expose their children to different activities that they either participated in or they have an interest in. Experts says it's usually not until late adolescence when a person starts to make these selections for himself.

"This is a funny example," says Dr. Mark Unterberg, a psychiatrist and executive medical director for Green Oaks Medical City in Dallas. Unterberg is also a consultant to several NFL and NBA teams. "I played football in high school and I played one year in college. Linebacker. I got injured and after that I quit. I wanted to go to medical school and I wasn't getting bigger like the pros. As much as I can tell, I'm not one of these people who talk a lot about their football careers. Partly because I played varsity and I started and all that but I wasn't an all-conference or one of these outstanding players. There was nothing really to talk about, if you want to know the truth. As a matter of fact, I'm not even a fan. I've never been a fan. If I went to one football game a season it would be because somebody had tickets and wanted me to go. I'm not a TV watcher. If a game came on I would watch it for a little bit. My father used to watch it but I would be bored.

"Well," Unterberg says, "I have two sons and they both decided they wanted to play football. But the interesting thing is they both ended up playing linebacker -- the position I played. They actually did much better. Both made all-conference. What really caught my attention was that I talked even less about baseball because I stopped playing baseball when I was in the ninth grade. I switched to tennis. Varsity tennis and football were my two sports. Low and behold, both of my sons play catcher. Coincidence? I'm not sure on what level. Many times it just seems that kind of thing goes on."

• Ralph Weisbeck used to take his kids to Bills game when Jack Kemp was quarterback and Lou Saban was coach. He remembers those days fondly, screaming and yelling side-by-side, pulling for the Bills with his offspring. Time proved the best investment he ever made.

"My kids are all gone now but they call me up after a game," the retired tool company executive says. "They know I'm watching."

• Dr. Rick Weinberg, a clinical psychologist at the Florida Mental Health Institute at the University of South Florida in Tampa, went to Chicago Bears games with his father. "He taught me the ins and outs of why you pass on third down," Weinberg recalls. "He really enhanced my appreciation of the game. We would sit all day, Saturdays and Sundays, and get popcorn and Cokes and we'd watch together, the way that a father and son can do things and relate to one another in a very loving, father/son kind of way around sports. That was very special to me and it is the sort of thing that I want to try to duplicate with my own son. It is important to me."

Weinberg took his own son to a game for the first time in 1991, when the boy turned 6. He was more interested in the cotton candy man and the Coke vendors than he was in the game. The next year he paid more attention to the game, responding when the crowds cheered and when a player spiked the ball. The color and pageantry lent itself even to a 7-year-old's vantage point. Dad contributed to his son's seduction by buying him a University of Michigan (Weinberg's alma mater) sweatshirt, Tampa Bay Bucs hat and shirt.

An educated, intelligent man, Weinberg tries to balance the love of sports he seeks to share with his boy against the rampant aggression and violence found in games like football.

"But I have to be honest," he says. "The hitting and the hurting -- I don't pay much attention to that until there is an injury. There is such enjoyment watching the successes of your team and cheering them on that you kind of forget about that other element. The thing that helps you overlook it is they are so well protected and well padded. For the amount of physical contact they have, there doesn't seem to be as many physical injuries as you would expect."

• Harold Hyman picked up the game from a brother 14 years his senior. Hyman was 6 when his brother took him to a University of Miami Hurricanes-University of Florida Gators game in 1963 at the Orange Bowl. "Since that time," Hyman says, "I've been crazy.

"My brother was in school, always telling me about the games," he says. "It was the colors, the excitement. I always played football in the house, throwing balls. I became a Gator fan because of my brother and anti-Hurricanes. As I grew up it was more than a passion. Like a war."

• Another South Florida football fan, Coral Gables banker Shawn Cahill, also was influenced by a brother's involvement in football. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, under the sway of the Ohio State University Buckeyes and Cleveland Browns.

"My older brother played football," Cahill says. "I enjoyed watching football every Sunday with my brother and my father. Every Thanksgiving, we went to my uncle's and we made sure dinner was served between games or at halftime."

Now a father himself, Cahill isn't losing any time with his infant son's indoctrination. Kyle was given a Florida State Seminoles football shirt before his first birthday in honor of his dad's alma mater. "He's on his way," Cahill says. "I'm looking forward to it."

• Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum's son is fully grown today, but as a child, he naturally gravitated to his father's love of football. "When Larry was 2 years old," Teitelbaum says, "he saw me shaving and he wanted to shave so we got him a toy plastic razor. I'd put shaving cream on his face and he would shave along with me. When he was 8 years old and he saw me watching playoff games, he joined me in the living room, watching. That was the beginning of his interest in football."

As with many kids it became important to the younger Teitelbaum to identify not only with his local teams, the Giants and Jets, but with a winner. He delivered his youthful passion to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the super team of the 1970s. Larry got yellow and black Steelers hats, shirts and scarves.

One of the biggest touchdowns Dad Teitelbaum ever made in his son's life was when he gave a paper at a conference in New Orleans. "I was in a restaurant and at the next table was Terry Bradshaw. This was a month after a Steelers' Super Bowl victory. We talked a little in the restaurant and I brought his autograph home to my son. That was bliss. That was the best gift anyone could have gotten for him because Terry Bradshaw was his hero. That won me a lot of points at that stage in his life. As he got older and I acquired seasons tickets to the Giants and Jets games, he couldn't get enough of that. He was very hot to go to all those games and he still does."

Sharing a delight in football gave Teitelbaum and his son a unique bond the boy would not have with his mother. Whatever problems or conflict they might have in life, football will always be special between them.

"Larry doesn't live at home anymore," Teitelbaum says, "but when we talk on the phone we always talk about sports. He will say, 'Did you hear about the latest trade?' I don't have that communication with my daughter and I don't have that with my wife so it's great that I have it with my son."

• One more story about football fathers and their sons:

Banker Dave Schwarzmueller married in 1966. He and his wife loyally attended Buffalo Bills home games. Over time the couple had two children, both girls. When their third child, a boy, was born, the doctor came out to the fathers' waiting room and informed Schwarzmueller.

"I went in to see my wife," he recalls. "The first thing she said was, 'Well, it's a boy. There goes my season ticket.'"

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 6. Play the Game

by Bob Andelman

"I played one year of football in junior college. I played for the same coach that I had in high school. When he went to the single wing, I was a 'blocking back.' When he went to a split-T there was nothing for me except the line. I went through one spring practice on the line and figured that was enough of this football stuff for me. Then I was a sportswriter for 41 years."

Volney Meece
Executive Director
Football Writers Association of America

There are a number of things in life that every man is expected to do:

Drink beer.

Talk about sex.

Dream about sports cars.

Play football.

The great thing about the last expectation on the list is that we can play the game at any level and easily relate to guys who play it at higher levels. It's a joyous -- and jarring -- shared experience that men come back to our entire lives.

"Football is the single most attractive sport we have," Dr. Thomas A. Tutko says. "Baseball is too slow. Basketball is too fast. Hockey and soccer are too confusing. But football stops just enough so we can analyze it and think about it."

Football also exploits many American values. Hard work, competition, territoriality. It represents, in a symbolic way, all of the tough things in America that we look upon as high values.

"At some point in their lives, guys either play football or know guys who do. It's the All-American experience," former Chicago Bears offensive tackle Dan Jiggetts says. "That shared experience is something that draws people back."

"It's a sport I grew up playing and still play every Sunday morning." Larry Mayer says. "We play two-hand touch, but it gets pretty rough. These are guys I've played with since the seventh grade."

Even Bill Evans, a marketing manager for Compuserve in Columbus, Ohio, returned to the sport, despite rocky beginnings as a participant. "I played two weeks of Pee Wee football and gave it up," he says. "The coaches were blue-collar, ex-high school linemen who took out their anger on kids. It was terrible what they put us through. Just a bunch of washed-up people reliving their youth."

No matter what the quality of their individual experience, men who have played the game enjoy a bond, even if they never played in the same game or at the same level. A stockbroker who played flag football in phys ed class knows the joy of catching a game-winning touchdown or third-down conversion pass as well as his auto mechanic who played ball at a Division III college.

A lot of men watch football because they played it. They've been involved in it as a sport themselves on a sandlot or on an organized level. They reach a point where it is hard to participate anymore so they become fans. They develop a fascination for it as an athletic event or as a form of entertainment.

Men gravitate back to the sports and activities they enjoyed as youths. Football provides a bonus: There is little or no possibility of women being involved with football because it is the last truly male bastion of strength, violence and speed. That's important because much as men love women, they love their time away from them, too.

Many men are former school and college athletes who seek to recapture the echoes of their youth by watching the sports they used to play. They connect to yesterday -- no responsibilities, no debt, no obligations, no shaving -- by watching others play sports they still love. It's kind of a Walter Mitty thing of seeing themselves out there, dashing across the chalk lines, being heroic, athletic, drawing a crowd, being admired.

Of course, along with all that is our eternal fascination with standing in awe of the skills of the best. On TV we see those who have the tools we lack. There is an envy, a fascination with the Heisman Trophy winner, just like there is when an average musician stands in awe of the best musicians.

And between those who never played the game and those who did, there will always be an invisible wall.

"If you are in a group of men where one or two have played the game and the others have not," Dr. Michael Messner says, "the ones who have played the game will have a sense of having knowledge that the others don't. Depending on how secure or insecure they are, they use that or not. There is always that thing that until you have been out there and felt the blows and had the blood on you and sweated and cried with your teammates, you can't understand the game. People say that about war, about football, about whatever."

The game appeals to us because it's so neat and tidy, leaving few loose ends.

Men play football in high school in deference to their aggressive drive, the ability to express that in a sublimated, safe way. "Nothing happens at the end of a game," Dr. Mark Unterberg says. "Only one team wins and the other loses and everybody goes off to take a shower and goes home. It becomes a safe way for one group of men to kill another group and become victorious. Sometimes the image of the old Roman Coliseum or Roman Empire analogy and the gladiators may not be too far off."

What about able-bodied young men who didn't play the game? Dr. Allen L. Sack is dubious that there are any.

"It is pretty hard to avoid," the sociologist says. "They probably tried out for a team or were involved very closely with males who were involved in it. Somewhere along the line, even if you hated it, you were probably pressured into playing it. I don't know if that is true of all social classes but it is certainly true of the working class. It's tough. If you go to school in a place like Odessa, Texas (made famous by H.G. Bissinger's 1990 book Friday Night Lights {Addison-Wesley}) it's very difficult to envision a young man, even those who despise and loathe the very nature of the game, not in some way or other feeling pressure to be involved. Even if that was coming out for practice and trying out for the team and not liking it, walking off and having a negative attitude toward it. In the years that follow, when those really rotten memories start to go away, you start romanticizing what it was like. You still have some experience with the game."

Part of the mystery of football is the great divergence between those who play and those who watch. Baseball fans commonly participate in adult softball leagues and bar leagues. But there aren't many amateur adult football leagues.

The downside of becoming a fan without having experienced football, or only being exposed to it on television, is that you don't appreciate the athleticism. TV better captures a basketball court or boxing ring, but a football field is 100 yards long. The close-up is adequate, but it doesn't put the game in perspective.

"That is why it's difficult for women to learn football from watching it on TV," says Dr. Daniel Begel, a Milwaukee psychiatrist and founder of the International Society for Sport Psychiatry. "And that's one of the reasons women can't get into it. They can't learn it from watching on TV. You have to have played it."

The difference could be in who you know. Certainly there are disabled men who become great and learned fans of the game without ever taking to the field. There are scores of people who did not necessarily participate but maybe had a parent or an uncle who participated so they had some vicarious exposure to it early on and developed an attraction to and interest in the sport.

* * *

Men associate with the aggressiveness of football and the violence. Yet we see a lot of people at games in wheelchairs. Some may have played the game before being disabled; some may have been disabled by football. Many of these men will never have that experience on a football field and yet they still associate with the game.

"It gets back to identifications," Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum says. "There is a pull, identifying with those who can run when you yourself can't. I have a friend who was paralyzed in childhood from polio. His greatest love became watching the ballet. It's the same phenomenon of being able to watch others who can glide gracefully or who can run and do the things you can't do. For some people that is very painful, but for others it becomes a way of identifying with the players and seeing yourself in them."

* * *

David Johnson is a special case. The Chula Vista, California, fan of the San Diego Chargers is about the same size as your average defensive tackle. In high school, the football coaches couldn't wait to get him on the playing field. And he wanted to play. But in the 10th grade, Johnson developed spinal meningitis. Since then, he's spent a lifetime wondering "What if?"

"The main reason I love pro football is I never had the opportunity to play it," he says. "I'm one of the biggest fans you'll ever find. I absolutely love football. I marvel at these people, how the quarterback can complete a 60-yard bomb to a receiver running down the field, hoping to hit him with pinpoint accuracy!"

(Silva empathizes with Johnson's plight. "When the ability to participate is taken away," he says, "particularly if it is not taken in a traumatic fashion, a lot of people will yearn for those things that they can't have.")

Johnson, an unemployed truck driver, relocated to Southern California from Indiana after a Navy stint in San Diego. He came to the Chargers' attention several years ago because everywhere they went, so did he. This superfan leaves the mobile home he shares with his parents 10 miles from the Mexican border and drives his '69 Chevy to daily training camp workouts, mini-camps and regular season practices. He's always positive and encouraging to his team.

"I give the guys a hand, a good round of applause. I appreciate the athletic ability of these people. They can do things I could never do in high school," he says.

One of the Chargers coaches took note of Johnson and "adopted" him, making sure a ticket is always available for him at Chargers home games.

Among Johnson's heroes of the game are the grand old man, George Blanda, and Dick Butkus. "Butkus exemplified the ferocity and violence that is football," Johnson says. "Seeing somebody tackle like him is a way to let out your frustrations from the week. When you've been unemployed as long as I have, you need something."

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 10. Are We Not Men?

by Bob Andelman

"I recall a game, the Jets against Miami. The field was wet and awful. I remember being home by myself and hyperventilating over that game. The room was spinning; I wasn't drinking. I remember A.J. Duhe deflecting a Richard Todd pass and running it in for a touchdown. I was screaming and pacing. Pretty embarrassing. I was glad nobody else was there."

Jim Luttrell
Newspaper editor
Louisville, Kentucky

Competition makes men clever, cunning and devious. It makes us mean. And sometimes it makes us pretty funny, too.

Before the Miami Dolphins moved to Joe Robbie Stadium, South Florida resident Joe DiRaffaele took the following sign to a game at the Orange Bowl:

Go Dolphins! (And Take the Cubans with You!) 

"I used to be kind of wild," he says, laughing. "I think about it now -- it was a terrible sign to bring. But, yeah, I did that. Today I would take a sign that said, 'Go Dolphins and Take the Heat with You!' "

Image via Wikipedia

(That recalls another Miami joke, one that circulated after the region was awarded an NHL expansion franchise in late 1992. Pundits suggested the team be named the "Humidity," as in: "If you thought the Heat was bad, wait till you see the Humidity!")

DiRaffaele is relentless as a competitor, especially when it comes to hating the Dolphins. "Don Shula cheats!" he swears. "I think it's a conflict that he gets to be on the scheduling committee and the referee committee. When he plays a cold-weather team, it's a team that plays indoors!"

As for his Jets, DiRaffaele is a true believer. "To me, it's not over till the Jets are mathematically eliminated. There's always hope. Every Sunday, there's hope."

That's the fun side of competition. The serious side is another part of what draws men to football. We get great satisfaction out of putting our best 11 guys against your best 11 guys and scraping and brawling until the best team wins (or more guys from one team than the other are left standing).

Men are, by nature, competitive. Women are not, according to Dr. William J. Beausay.

"Now that doesn't mean that a female here and there cannot be taught to be competitive, because they can," he hastens to add. "Look at female tennis players. Obviously they are competitive. But even there, they lack the fire men have. If you compare feminine sexuality to male sexuality you'll discover that the female in our species is the life-bearer and men don't know anything about that at all. We are out in the woods, hunting and competing for food and the female is at home having babies. I know the women don't like to believe that is where they are happiest, but they are, whether they like it or not. I know there is a heavy emphasis in America on women's liberation but they are not as liberated as they would like to believe. The most liberated female is the one who does not fight her anatomy but who goes along with it. This does not mean she is not into athletics or sports; she can be but, by nature, she does not have the fire and the highly motivated competitive spirit that men do. All you have to do is watch them. They just lack it. They don't have what men do. I'm not saying that is good. I'm not sure it's good for men; probably we pay a price for that. We are men and we compete with one another. We have been doing it for a million years. We compete for available food and for the best women and we compete in football games."

Beausay says that when he looks at sports, he can easily see a million years of compressed male evolution represented.

"For example," he says, "the quarterback and his offensive team are a perfect model of a lion and his pride. There are about 50 points of connection between the dominant male lion and the pride and the quarterback and a football team. You can see the genetic drives from way, way back are playing a role in competitive sports. One of the things you learn when you study animals is that the territorial instinct is a heavy one. When you get into football and basketball, that territorial drive is very important. Keep the enemy out of your territory. Years ago, it was keep them away from your females. In sports today, it's keep the aggressor out of your end of the football field."

The onset of civilization frustrated the genetic drive in all men to hunt and feed. Men still hunt, but it's primarily symbolic. We still stake out our own little territory but we do it down at City Hall and we don't have to defend our caves as we used to. So football, among other sports, provides an outlet for this primal need.

A short course, then, on man's evolution: Hunter . . . Player . . . Spectator.

Men have a territorial instinct and drive for supremacy. There is always a dominant male who plays to win and be No.1. It's there with the animals and it's there with us.

But we can't give in to that instinct as we live in planned developments with 6-foot fences, fire hydrants and utility poles between every wired-for-cable cave. So we pay $25 and go to a football game to experience the modern equivalent of the hunt and kill simply by identifying with the players on the football field.

"Men have a tremendous advantage from a competitive standpoint because we know how to compete," Dan Jiggetts says. "We've been allowed to do it for years."

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 12. Fly Like An Eagle

by Bob Andelman

"I enjoy seeing the best of anything. And professional sports provide the best athletes in the world. My wife and I go to the ballet. We like to see the best ballerinas in the world. It's exciting. And in professional sports, you get to see the best athletes every week."

Dick Williams
President, The Derrick Club
Houston Oilers Fan Club

Not every man is turned on by the violence in football. Many are drawn in by other elements. The pitchers of beer, video replays, the synthetic fibers straining to contain the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders . . . and the bona fide grace of the athletes.

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The challenge of a football player pushing his way against a formidable obstacle -- the other team -- involves skills of instant acceleration, pinpoint passing (that's why we call it "threading the needle") and delicate agility. You can see great moves, strength against strength. The bomb, the quick strike. That's the stuff that makes many men scream in ecstasy.

"I'm not animalistic or anything," Miami Dolphins fan Shawn Cahill says. "I might go, 'Oooh' or 'Yeaaah!' But I don't see football as an outlet for violence. I much prefer seeing a great pass or run or catch. A great hit is not what I look for in a football game. I'd rather see a deep bomb or a catch over the middle. Because everything's got to be perfect for it to happen. You've got to have good protection, the receiver has to get open and catch the ball. A great hit -- many times it's a defensive lapse or the quarterback is hit on the blind side. More and more people are getting hurt; it's not good for the game when the stars are out."

Most people think of basketball when they think of grace in the big four men's sports. But more than a few guys stick by football's aerial displays and majestic strategy. Seeing a classic 60-yard Hail Mary pass spiral leave Joe Montana's cocked arm as a defender takes him down, watching the football majestically arch high above Candlestick Park before slipping perfectly into a zigzagging Jerry Rice's cradled arms at the moment he leaps across the goal line cannot be compared to mere sex. It's bigger that that.

It's a combination of intensity and finesse. Passing is a kind of weird science, seemingly understood only by the game's best-looking, more articulate philosopher-kings. It's a cauldron of magicks that Merlin could but stand by and admire.

Speed, elusiveness, cunning, strategy, teamwork and organization as well as raw athletic skills like jumping, catching, throwing, kicking and running are what make football irresistible to men with a distaste for the hitting, crunching and bone-grinding that also makes up the sport. Beauty to these guys is watching an O.J. Simpson, Herschel Walker, Emmitt Smith or Deion Sanders fly down field, stepping left, stepping right, hurdling over would-be antagonists to gain yards and score touchdowns.

"I watch the ball," Volney Meece says. "I've heard for 50 years that you ought to watch the pulling guards and the center and all that technical stuff but I just can't do it. I watch the ball and I watch the quarterback. Oklahoma, for so many years, ran the wishbone and split-T formation -- you had to watch the quarterback to find out what was going on. There is nothing more beautiful than when the quarterback comes down the line, fakes the pitch and the end takes the fake out with the running back and the quarterback cuts down field and it's just wide open. To me, that is the beautiful play in football."

To Meece, there is no greater poetry in the world.

"I have seen enough football," he says, "that I am aware of what's going on and how many people they flank out and what the backfield formation is when they come to the line of scrimmage and things like that. I don't try to think about it till it hurts my head but I do try to get into the strategy of the game."

Conversely, if your favorite team -- or the one you happen to be watching -- features a player like Billy Sims, Barry Sanders or Thurman Thomas, you're going to watch the halfback and see where he's going. Because when that man gets the ball, it's showtime.

The real glory in the game goes to those who avoid getting hit, thanks to natural talents, speed, peripheral vision and fast thinking.

It's easier for men to talk about how the Bills were last weekend or how mean the Dawgs are in the trenches in Cleveland than to acknowledge that the sport, played at a very high level in certain positions, is very, very skilled and almost ballet-like. The greatest players in the game are phenomenal athletes. They are very gifted at what they do and everybody appreciates it. Some may appreciate it on a conscious level and be able to talk about it. Men don't particularly talk about the grace and beauty because that isn't the kind of conversations men have. Men allow themselves to talk about how tough their team is but they really don't talk about what a terrific athlete, or how graceful Jerry Rice might be, even though he exhibits the kind of athleticism that an ice skater or a gymnast has. Men don't talk about stuff that way.

"The grace of these athletes amazes me," Dr. Daniel M. Glick says. "These guys are wearing 20 to 30 pounds of equipment and yet they go out and make leaping catches, jumping and rolling over people. Look at defensive linebackers and defensive players like Lawrence Taylor. I don't know what the stats are on him but he has got to be somewhere close to 275 pounds. He does the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds and he moves around people like they aren't even there. The man is a giant, and at the same time, extremely graceful. He doesn't get the kind of publicity that an acrobat might get when they jump up into the middle of three defensive backs and pull down some passes from a quarterback on a Hail Mary."

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 15. You Better, You Bet

by Bob Andelman

"We need something to gamble on. And since you've got money on football, you might as well watch it."

Bruce Kessler
Warehouseman
North Brunswick, N.J.

The gambling aspect of football is huge. It cannot be ignored. Go to college or pro games -- or sports bars, even -- you'll see people lined up at pay phones to call in their bets. And if it's not so widespread, why do the sports sections of most major dailies print Las Vegas-style betting odds for football games?

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Football is the nation's most popular sport. The best reason for gambling on it is that's it's a regularly scheduled, weekly event with fewer games than any other major professional sport. Take the 162-game baseball season and divide by 1/10. The amount of money bet on baseball might then be equal to football, but it's unlikely.

Scoring rules the line. Whereas baseball is a low-scoring sport in which games commonly end 4-2, 2-1, a relative football score would be 28-14 or 14-3. The way points are counted also makes football a little more attuned to gambling.

"People make a lot of the 'line,' " Chicago Bear Report managing editor Larry Mayer says. "Even people who aren't bettors, it's a nice thing to be able to toss around, 'Do you think they'll cover?' "

Mike North became interested in football because he gambled. A lot.

"My opinion is, if there was no gambling , football would be America's third sport, behind baseball and basketball," he says. "There's billions of dollars gambled annually on football. You go to any sports book and they're packed on Saturdays and Sundays. Look at office pools. Billions!"




It's easy to understand the appeal: unlike horse racing, bettors start with a 50/50 chance. You can then complicate a bet with over/under point spreads. In the Super Bowl, you can bet anything -- even the coin toss.

North, a Chicago radio personality at WSCR, describes himself as a "Kool-aid drinking, Jim Jones Bears fan." He doesn't place wagers on gridiron games anymore. But it was fun while it lasted.

"I quit when I got the job here. It's a federal offense; there's no sense jeopardizing your job for it," he says. "I love the game for the hitting, the violence, the spread. I don't enjoy the game as much as I did when I bet on it. I started gambling on football when I was 17. It's illegal in Chicago but there's a bookie on every other corner. Monday Night Football still draws a major audience because people have money on it. Otherwise, it would have gone the way of My Mother the Car."

In North's experience, if he's watching a game with six guys, at least three of them have money riding on the outcome.

Gambling may be something that heightens pleasure for men. Lots of people do extreme things to heighten sexuality and orgasms. Sometimes gambling becomes the main thing for men, not football.

"I can remember going to a game in Kansas City," Dr. D. Stanley Eitzen says. "Kansas City was way ahead and all of a sudden, late in the game, somebody was punting and people started booing. I didn't catch on. It had to do with the point spread. Instead of punting they should have tried to go for the first down because they could have kicked a field goal later on that would have affected the spread."

Gambling is endemic to football. Contrary to what some may say, "everybody" isn't betting on games, but far more men do it than talk about it.

"Why do I bet on football? I'm a gambler by nature," Joe DiRaffaele says. "I go to Vegas occasionally. I bet basketball games. But I don't bet on football to increase the excitement of the game. It's strictly for profit or loss. It's not some driven need. I bet on football because sometimes I can't believe how some of the oddsmakers will set a line and favor a team. I will bet occasionally on a football game. But I only bet on my 'lock' picks. I do have rules. I won't bet Dolphins games because I don't bet with my heart -- I only bet with my head. I will occasionally bet on the Jets. But, you know something? I'm great at picking them -- up to the Super Bowl. Then I get annihilated. I actually picked Buffalo in '93 -- I said, 'Hey, they've got a chance!'"

The appeal of gambling on football is easy to pinpoint. The odds are easy, in a sense, because you're picking one team over the other, not one in eight at the track or jai-alai. (Betting the spread will complicate your day.) And the game is unpredictable.

You're never certain of the outcome until the game is well under way. The suspense turns men on and makes it easy for sports to be linked to gambling -- the element of uncertainty and the seeming attempt by people to predict an outcome. The business of predicting the unpredictable and seeing whether it will come true is fun. Watching the drama unfold to see what will be the outcome is very gripping and suspense-filled. If you care about the teams that are involved it will hold your attention.

Larry Selvin bets one game a year -- the Super Bowl. "And I usually do well at it," he says. "There's been 27 Super Bowls and I've won nearly every time."

There is an addictive element to football gambling, not unlike drugs or alcohol. Some people, like Selvin, can do it once a year and move on. Others get started and can't stop.

"There may be a classification of people called 'addictive personalities'," Dr. Thomas A. Tutko says. "It may very well be inherited, biological or genetic but they do find that there are people that have this adrenalin rush from betting money and getting the results. There becomes a point where you can't control it. You just get carried away by it."

Tutko says gamblers and football fans fall in that category.

"I would suspect with the true gambler, however, it's the gambling that is far more important than the game because they are so addicted that football simply becomes the medium for their betting," he says.



It gets back to feeling special and feeling you know how to pick 'em or you know better than the other guy. It gives some men the feeling of being more involved in the game.

"You have a bigger stake," Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum says. "No pun intended. You feel more a part of it. It's illegal but zillions of people seem to find a way to do it and they enjoy it."

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 16. I Don't Like Mondays

by Bob Andelman

"There is validity in what some people say, because sometimes the coaches don't have a clue. I've seen high school games where my mother could call better plays."

Larry Mayer
Managing editor
Chicago Bear Report

Everybody knows better than the coach whose team lost the big one on Sunday. Come Monday, it's crystal clear to the world that the Chargers should have gone for it on fourth down and inches, with 4:02 remaining in the fourth quarter.

Men develop an unshakable sense that they know better. It's fourth and inches and we're calling out the plays in our living rooms, praying Bill Parcells hears us through the miles and wires. If the coach calls a different play and it doesn't work, 9 out of 10 times we're cursing him for not doing it our way. "We would have gotten the first down and scored.







Sportswriters and sports talk show hosts from coast to coast devote barrels of ink and hours of air time to dissecting wrong choices, "what if" and "if only" strategies straight through till late Wednesday, when they start previewing the next game.

"I remember a friend of mine who was one of the greatest fans of Oklahoma football," Volney Meece says. "He was a fanatic but also a pure fan. In 1957, when Oklahoma's 47-game winning streak was snapped by Notre Dame, 7-0 at Norman, my friend walked out of the stadium behind a guy who was really getting on Bud Wilkinson for losing that game. The guy said, 'Don't you think maybe Bud Wilkinson's spending too much time on his TV show and we're not getting the coaching we used to?' Wilkinson won 47 straight and lost one and the guy wants to get on him!"

God love the Monday morning quarterback. Tolerate him, anyway.

When we know the players, study the depth charts or just listen to endless hours of analysis and debate over the relative merits and potential of certain players, men feel empowered. Knowledge builds kings, but it creates a good number of sports idiot savants, too.

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The popularity of sports radio call-in shows, which give fans a forum for sounding off, encouraged many newspapers to establish separate letters to the editor columns in their sports pages. Meece hates them. "You get nothing but the lunatic fringe writing in," he says. "Coaches have enough problems nowadays with kids having changed so much individually. You have enough discipline problems without having some fan write in and say that the coach isn't doing a good job."

Fans might question whether Meece, a retired sportswriter, isn't just protecting his turf; until recently, the only guys with a forum to blast coaches were sportswriters.

Sometimes the only joy a fan gets out of seeing his team lose is getting mad at the coach and second-guessing him. It's fun, a sport in and of itself.






"When your team loses," Larry Mayer says, "the first thing people complain about is the play-calling. That's the one thing everybody has an opinion about."

Because the game's action is frequently interrupted, fans -- like coaches -- have several moments to plot the team's next play or series. In that way, men can fantasize about being involved in the game. They can call the play and, if they're right, take great satisfaction in being geniuses. Or morons, if the opposition intercepts, forces a fumble or shuts the offense down some other way.

Monday morning quarterbacking is one of the major gratifications of football. In hockey and soccer the action is continuous. Strategies evolve during games, but fans don't feel the same involvement. It deny us a chance to participate. In football, the clock and action stops on every play.


* * *
An interesting phenomena: the fan whose team can do no wrong. The players, anyway. The coaches earn no loyalty; they're all idiots. Management? Where did those guys ever play ball? And team owners draw more derision than anybody short of game officials. The guys at the top of the 28 NFL franchises are usually the most disliked figures in town. Spoiled brats who earned their money and teams the old-fashioned way: They inherited it.

It's easier to direct resentment toward management, coaches and the owners because they are the ones who are supposed to be putting the team together. They're supposed to be getting the best available material. It's also the "American Way" to be able to second guess, to question and say, "I know better. Why did you make that move? What did you hire this coach for?"







* * *
There's no denying that some fans might actually know more than the coaches or the owners. There are guys who consume every magazine, newspaper article, book, TV and radio show on football. Coaches have their hands full just keeping up with their own team's day-to-day operations. But the fans study for drafts as if the teams might actually be call late one night to ask their learned recommendations. Fantasy football leaguers do draft players, so they probably do know a thing or two.

"I tend to critique the coach non-stop about play-calling and personnel decisions," Jeff Spear says. "I love watching the draft and thinking about where my team is going to pick. It's a whole separate strategy. What are their weaknesses? Long range goals are important; you have to be thinking a few years down the road. The thinking process that you can put on the game attracts me to it. I'm a baseball fan. People say that's the thinking man's game. I see football that way also."

Game strategy is an important lure for men who put themselves above the violence and aggression that's commonplace in football. Can the offense anticipate the defense? Or can the D throw the offense off?

Proponents insist football is more than three yards and a cloud of dust. There is strategy and a certain appreciation of thinking in the planning and the organization behind the game. It leads to very different views.

• "I like the well-placed defensive schemes, the well-executed plays," Andrew Spear -- Jeff's brother -- says. "One year, the Redskins kept repeating the same play to the left. When it came down to it against the Giants late in the season, they ran it to the right. For me, it's not the hits, it's the aesthetics. The well-executed offensive or defensive play, as opposed to one guy taking somebody's head off -- I enjoy that as much as anybody, but I enjoy the beauty of the game much more."

• "I don't know the buzz words," hospitality management consultant Mark von Dwingelo says. "I can talk about pulling guards and off-tackles, bombs and screens. I also like 290-pound guys who run the 100 in nine seconds. It's become more of a science. The play-action pass? Joe Montana used to do that. He'd feint the hand-off, throw the defense off and throw the other way."

• "When I go to Tampa Stadium," Dr. Rick Weinberg says, "I don't like to sit on the 20-, 30-, 40- or 50-yard line. I sit in the end zone with my son and bring a pair of binoculars. We can see the defensive scheme and the offensive scheme. I certainly can appreciate the different plays and how the defensive backs cover the receivers as they go out. The play starts and you see the quarterback going on a pass-play. In the binoculars you can see the ends or the wide receivers go out and criss-cross or do their various patterns. It all comes together in that picture like clockwork. I find our end zone view really adds to the appeal of the game."

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Appendix: Can't Tell the Players Without a Scorecard

by Bob Andelman

Here's a roster of men and women interviewed during research for Why Men Love Football: A Report From the Couch:

Dr. Robert L. Arnstein, retired chief psychiatrist of Yale University Health Services, lives in Hamden, Connecticut

Dr. William J. Beausay, a psychologist in Columbus, Ohio, is founder of the Academy of Sport Psychology International and a consultant to athletes in pro sports such as baseball, football, basketball, hockey and motor racing

Dr. Daniel Begel, a psychiatrist in Milwaukee, is a founder of the International Society for Sport Psychiatry

Eric L. Berger, a personal injury defense attorney for insurance companies in Sunrise, Florida

Ed Berry, a former Marine and retired gardener for the City of San Diego, lives in El Cajon, California

Kenton Blagbrough, a textbook buyer at Boston University

Barry Bradley, senior editor of the Maddux Report, a business magazine in St. Petersburg, Florida

Roger W. Brummett, a vice president of marketing for a human resources management firm in Carmel, Indiana, is founder and president of the Baltimore Colts' Thundering Herd Fan Club

Frank Bryant, a former Army helicopter pilot, is a property developer in Long Beach, California

Dr. Robert B. Cialdini, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University in Tempe

John Cimasko, a route salesman for Pepsi-Cola in Carmel, Indiana, and charter member of the Baltimore Colts' Thundering Herd Fan Club

Dr. Jay Coakley, a professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Sport and Leisure at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, is the author of Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies (Moseby-Yearbook)

Dr. Gregory B. Collins, a psychiatrist, is section head of the Alcohol and Drug Recovery Center of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio and is a consultant to NFL teams

Jerry DeForest Jr., owns The Tailgate Sports Bar in Staten Island, New York

Joe DiRaffaele, owns Labor World, a chain of temporary help services based in Coconut Creek, Florida

Joe Diroff, a retired Navy man and former mathematics teacher, lives in Detroit

Barry Dreayer, a salesman/consultant for computer software and voice mail systems, taught a course for sports novices called "TeachMeSports" in Atlanta

Dr. D. Stanley Eitzen, a professor of sociology at Colorado State University at Fort Collins is a past-president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and co-author (with Dr. George H. Sage) of Sociology of North American Sport (William C. Brown)

Bill Evans, a marketing manager with Compuserve in Columbus, Ohio

Keith Farber, a courier in Buena Park, California

Richard M. "Rick" Georges, an attorney in St. Petersburg, Florida

Dr. Daniel M. Glick, a psychiatrist in Scottsdale, Arizona

Pat Harmon, an historian for the College Football Hall of Fame in Kings Island, Ohio

Peter Hendricks, an attorney in New Brunswick, N.J.

Dr. Edward R. Hirt, professor of psychology at Indiana University in Bloomington

Harold Hyman, a property manager in Tamarac, Florida

Dr. Seppo E. Iso-Ahola, a sport psychologist at the University of Maryland at College Park, is the co-author (with Brad Hatfield) of Psychology of Sports: A Social Psychological Approach (Wm. C. Brown)

Dan Jiggetts, a former offensive tackle with the Chicago Bears, is a sportscaster with WSCR Radio and WBBM-TV in Chicago (partner of Mike North at WSCR)

David Johnson, a truck driver, lives in Chula Vista, California

Bruce Kessler, a warehouseman in North Brunswick, New Jersey, taught the author of Why Men Love Football how to play football

Jim Luttrell, a copy chief with the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky

Palmiro "Paul" Mazzoleni, a retired service station owner and founder of Martha's Coffee Club in Green Bay, Wisconsin

Larry Mayer, managing editor of the Chicago Bear Report, lives in Palatine, Illinois

Volney Meece, a retired sportswriter of 41 years experience, is executive director of the Football Writers Association of America in Edmond, Oklahoma

Jim Melvin, a health and fitness writer and copy editor at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida

Dr. Michael A. Messner, a sociologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, is the author Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity (Beacon Press) and co-editor (with Dr. Don Sabo) of Sport, Men and the Gender Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives (Human Kinetics Publishers)

Mike North, a sports radio personality at WSCR-Radio in Chicago (partner of Dan Jiggetts)

Dr. Bruce C. Ogilvie, a clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at San Jose State University, is a director of the Institute of Athletic Motivation

Jerry Pigeon, a banker in Green Bay, Wisconsin

William E. "Bill" Price, an associate professor of mathematics at Niagara University in New York

Jim Runels, a retired Nabisco Brands sales management executive, lives in Yorba Linda, California

Dr. Don Sabo, a sociologist at D'Youville University in Amherst, N.Y., is author of Jock: Sports and Male Identity (Prentice Hall), co-editor (with Dr. Michael Messner) of Sport, Men and the Gender Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives (Human Kinetics Publishers) and one-time football captain at the State University of New York at Buffalo

Dr. Allen L. Sack, a professor of sociology and coordinator of the sports management program at the University of New Haven, Connecticut, played defensive end for the University of Notre Dame's 1966 championship football team

Dr. George H. Sage, a retired professor of kinesiology and sociology at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, is the author of Power and Ideology in American Sport (Human Kinetics) and co-author (with Dr. D. Stanley Eitzen) of Sociology of North American Sport (Wm. C. Brown)

Dave Schwarzmueller, a banker in West Seneca, New York

Larry Selvin, a financial accountant in West Roxbury, Mass.

Dr. John M. Silva, a professor of sport psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a co-editor of Psychological Foundations of Sport (Human Kinetics)

Andrew L. Spear, a music sales representative in San Francisco (and Jeff's brother)

Jeff Spear, a comedy writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in Los Angeles (and Andrew's brother)

Joe Surdi, a barber in St. Petersburg, Florida

Michele Szynal, a communications manager for the North Atlantic Group of The Gillette Company in Boston

Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum, a clinical psychologist in New York City

Dr. Thomas A. Tutko, a clinical psychologist at San Jose State University and a director of the Institute of Athletic Motivation.

Dr. Mark Unterberg, a psychiatrist and executive medical director of Green Oaks Medical City in Dallas, is a consultant to NFL and NBA teams

Aaron Vaughn, a copy editor at the Valley Daily News in Kent, Washington

Mark H. von Dwingelo, a hospitality industry management consultant in Atlanta

Dr. Rick Weinberg, a clinical psychologist at the University of South Florida's Florida Mental Health Institute in Tampa

Neil Wiesenfeld, owner of a promotional advertising company in Atlanta

Ralph Weisbeck, a retired executive of a tool manufacturing company, lives in Williamsville, New York

H. R. "Dick" Williams, a retired cleaning services contractor and founder of the Houston Oilers fan organization, The Derrick Club, in Sugar Land, Texas

Ann Winkler, advertising manager for Apple Computer

William J. Winslow, president of the Institute of Athletic Motivation in Redwood City, California

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 13. I Yam What I Yam

by Bob Andelman

"The traditional campfire for men of the 1970s and '80s is the football game. Football is your little domain, where you can go back and be a man again. That's where we get a release. You put on your team colors, go out and get crazy with your buddies. Want to talk about male bonding? Football is the male experience."

Dan Jiggetts
Former Chicago Bears offensive tackle
Chicago

Football -- like funny car racing and hardware stores -- is one of those things men can only truly enjoy with other men. Women don't get it and men honestly don't care if they ever do.

"I'm sure it's healthy to have enjoyment away from your wife, have a few beers with your friends," Shawn Cahill says. "On Sundays, in the fall, football is that outlet."

Part of the reason is traditional socialization; sports are for boys, playing house is for girls. That ancient view, of course, predates women athletes such as Manon Rheaume stopping goals for the Tampa Bay Lightning's farm team and Lynette Woodward slamming backboards to the tune of "Sweet Georgia Brown" for the Harlem Globetrotters. And certainly the ranks of women who enjoy watching sports is growing enormously. But it's just these breakthroughs that cause many men to rebel and try to re-fortify the remaining male-only domains against further female incursions.

For their book, Sport, Men and the Gender Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives (Human Kinetics Publishers), sociologists Dr. Don Sabo of D'Youville College and Dr. Michael Messner of the University of Southern California interviewed many former athletes about their subsequent careers in the white collar world. One man wasn't adapting well to his new boss -- a woman. He had never been supervised by a woman in the workplace before and he wasn't handling it well.

"Let me put it this way," the man told Messner. "A woman can do a job as good as I can and maybe even be my boss but I'll be damned if she could go out on the football field and take a hit from Ronnie Lott."

When all else fails, men will still reduce the battle of the sexes to a question of brute force.

"I think that is partly what football does for men today," Messner says. "It provides them with a place even if they can't play football. If you had seen this guy you would have realized he couldn't have taken a hit from Ronnie Lott, either. Nor could most of us. I couldn't and wouldn't want to. A very small proportion of men could actually do that. Symbolically, what that provides to a lot of men in this day and age is a certain kind of symbolic proof that there is this place where men are clearly superior and different from women. Whereas in all other aspects of our lives there are women moving into positions of power and authority."

Jeff Spear, a Los Angeles-based comedy writer for The Tonight Show, admits to letting go a little aggression by watching his Denver Broncos have at it.

"I see Steve Atwater taking some guy out and I react to that," he says. "If it's a really good clean hit you tend to have some feeling for the guy that he just laid out. You have to be very impressed and amazed at the prowess of this huge guy. I'm not delusional that I want to wear a Bronco helmet and bounce off the walls. I'm just more impressed that basically someone can get away with doing that without being arrested."

Men watching games with other men -- and without women -- create a masculine space, not unlike an adolescent's treehouse or fort.





One of the observations that Messner and Sabo make in their book is that during the 1960s and '70s, a lot of men viewed and participated in football as a masculinity ritual. As a cultural spectacle, football somehow reverberated with more traditional notions of what it means to be a man in American society. 

Football players were caricatures of comic book masculinity. They were the guys who succeeded and who got the girls, the guys who literally and symbolically embodied masculine adequacy, bravery, courage, aggression and strength.

Football acted as a passion play for men, but the passions that were being enacted had a lot to do with patriarchal cultural traditions and notions about what makes men and why men are superior to and different from women.

"The socio-cultural backdrop for this was that it was the '60s, where changes in the marketplace in the division of labor between men and women really became noticed," Sabo says. Sabo's specialty is gender relations in sport. "Women participated in the work place; men's roles in families changed. Gender changes had been unfolding since before the turn of the century. But it was in the '60s that we really began to notice the in-your-face changes in men's and women's lives. You had the emergence of the modern women's movement. Women were actively questioning the traditional scripts that patriarchal custom had laid out for them. The cheerleader roles, the wife/mother role, the political subordinate/housemate role. I think men were shaken to a certain extent by the women's movement and intimidated by it. They had no real discussion that enabled them to analyze the changes in their lives that feminism provided for women.

"There was no men's study in the '60s and '70s," Sabo says. "What happened in the '80s however was a shift in the cultural core of meanings inside ritualized football. The shift was from gender images to what I call meritocratic images. In the '60s and '70s, football players carried their image in their bravado and biceps. By the end of the '80s the football image was being carried in $370 Italian leather attache cases that contained the fat contracts that players had gleaned from the business of professional football."

The imagery surrounding male athletes shifted from comic book heroes to million-dollar, muscle-bound dynamos. In the same way that football ritual masked and belied the realities of men's lives in the '60s and '70s, football players got harder while regular guys -- emotionally and interpersonally -- got softer. Football players got richer while many other American men got poorer.

Football as the American Dream Machine for gender or economic images remains constant. But illusions fostered by the game shifted.

That's one of the things we get from entertainment: illusion.

* * * 

Research by University of Northern Colorado students under the tutelage of Dr. George H. Sage confirmed what men already knew: We watch televised sports to hang out with our current friends (and talk about old friends). 

"That is one of the explanations for the success of sports bars," Sage says. "Guys can go with their friends, have a few beers in the presence of a bunch of other guys doing the same thing and watch the games. Or they can have a couple of their friends over to watch."

"I'm sure there is a certain amount of truth in that," Jeff Spear says. "There tends to be a certain . . . I don't want to use the word 'bonding' because it's a dumb '90s term but there's a certain clique you fall into when you are watching football with your friends and it's very easy and it's relaxing."

Bars have carried sporting contests via radio and television since Marconi's day. But sports bars put the two concepts together with Madison Avenue marketing glitz and gee-whiz satellite technology to create multimedia sports menageries. Imagine a place with dueling twin 60-inch projection TVs, dining booths with their own 60-channel sets and more TVs everywhere you look. A red L.E.D. SportsTicker display with the latest news and scores. Attractive women in day-glo, silky short-shorts and suggestive, bodice-gripping T-shirts serving hot and greasy snacks and cold beer. Plus electronic darts, pool, video games and 3-on-3 mini basketball courts.

They're great for making new pals for a few hours.

• "We scream and yell for the same things," Barry Dreayer says. "I start conversations in sports bars. We find unbelievable bonds -- a passion for the Raiders or Gators. When that happens, I feel like I'm at a stadium." 

• "We sort of regress a little bit," attorney Eric Berger says, sheepishly.





• "I'm more myself, more vocal with the guys," Atlanta entrepreneur Neil Wiesenfeld says. "We do things, say things guys do. We'll scrutinize every play. Criticize. 'Oh! Why didn't they get open?' We try to be critical; we want our team to do well. 'Third down and short yardage -- wouldn't a screen be great?' We may do that with the women, but we watch our language. You can be a jerk with your friends. When you're with strangers, you're more reserved. When you get with your friends, you're more excited. Most people, by themselves, don't high-five themselves."

Yesterday's ultimate guy-getaway was Hef's castle. But Hef is ready for Social Security. The place to go in the '90s is a sports bar.

"I have noticed that if you are watching football in a group there is a whole lot more talk and noise than if you watch it by yourself," Messner says. "There is obviously drinking with some men -- that might raise the excitement level or just bring down some of their inhibitions -- but my sense is that a lot of men just prefer to watch football games with other men."

Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum agrees. "I think a lot of men feel that only another man could really understand the game in depth the way they do," he says. "They might enjoy having the company of their spouses watching the game or going to the game but it is a different thing. It is not the same thing as sharing it with other guys."

Sports and the way men view and talk about sports serves to separate men from women. It functions to exclude women from certain institutions like workplace culture and so forth. Away from stadiums and home perches in front of the TV, males use sports in the office culture as a sort of a bond; sports talk is the glue that holds men together. It's a way that men massage their relationships with each other in workplaces; "lubricate" their relationships might be a better way to put it. Lots of women have experienced this as a way that men exclude them. Whether or not men intend to use that to exclude women, it is experienced by women that way.

Even men who are not hardcore football fans may use pigskin chatter to escape female counterparts in the work place.

Women don't care as much about it as men. Men would be just as willing to watch the game with a woman who was as knowledgeable and involved as they are but that doesn't tend to happen.

Football is a place where men know that they are physically superior to women. But it's also a place where men of all sizes, shapes and physical abilities are basically equal when it comes to sitting and watching a game side-by-side. I'm not going to take a hit from Ronnie Lott but I can be equal to the guy sitting next to me who maybe played a couple of years in college and understand the game as well as he does.

"All men can identify with the men on the field as men," Messner says. "Being knowledgeable about the game as a spectator is a way to get respect among your peers not necessarily having played."

* * * 

Why do men love football over other games?

Strength. Muscle. Brute force. Raw power.

Even if little boys and little girls were socialized in the same way, football is intrinsically a different kind of game in that it takes brute force. It is one of the last areas of American life -- and probably one of the last occupations -- to preclude equal participation by men and women because of how we are socialized as youngsters. The game depends on strength and speed and hormonal advantages that men have and women do not. 

"You have to be 280 to 300 pounds to play offensive line and I don't see 280-pound women to do that," says Dr. Allen L. Sack, a University of New Haven sociology professor and former Notre Dame defensive end. "If they should come along they deserve the right to play but I just don't see it happening. Unless by some miracle of evolutionary mutation women are able to build muscle mass in the same way men can, or if the game is radically altered to permit women to play so that it might become less incredibly wild and winning has to be left dependent upon physical skill, not skill of muscle mass. Football is a throwback. It fits best in a pre-industrial model where physical strength and prowess were that important. As society has changed over hundreds of years there are fewer and fewer areas of our lives that are still dependent on physical force and physical prowess. In most areas men and women can probably compete fairly, equally -- except in the realm of military front lines or in a football game. It will probably one of the last bastions of male dominance." 

The professionals believe football mirrors much of modern American society -- the good, the bad and the ugly. Particularly the ugly. 

Men still dominate most institutions in American society but women have made inroads and many men now work in places where women are peers and even bosses. Some men are threatened by that.



Football provides a sense of clarity about gender. There are fully armored men on a battlefield, fighting over territory like in the good old Dark Ages, using their bodies as weapons to blast other men back. On the sidelines are scantily clad cheerleaders exposed with no armor. On television, the camera cuts back and forth between the battles of the men on the gridiron and the tender, sexual objects on the sideline. 

"It provides a real sense of clarity between what men are and what women are," Messner says. "Women are there for support and sexual distraction and what the men are doing on the field is really the center stage and what really matters and why we are all there." 

TV commercials during football games represent the same imagery, further reinforcing the differences between the brutal and fairer sexes. 

Sack supports Messner's theory. 

"If you brought someone from Europe for a day and you wanted them to get an idea of what American life was all about, the values and the culture, you might just take them to the Super Bowl," Sack suggests. "What would they see there? They would definitely see the role women play. While the main action is taking place on the field with the heroic men, the women are scantily clad, positioned in the background as supporters of the men. And if you look very close and you are very astute you would see that there are very few black coaches, that the entire team is represented by blacks except that the quarterbacks are white and his guards are white. As you move off into the periphery, more and more of the athletes are black and, just like blacks play a peripheral role in industry, law and politics, you are going to see all that reflected in the game."
A foreign visitor would also see the aggressiveness of American society and the fans getting turned on by the violence. Sack says that can be traced to the American frontier.

"Rugged individualism, violence and competitiveness has made us a great nation," he says. "But I think some of that has spilled over into negative qualities, like young men who are taught to never accept no for an answer, and young men who are taught to be incredibly aggressive in football. This is pounded into your head. Never give up. To be a winner, you have to give 110 percent. Never accept the possibility of defeat. Physically push until you dominate the other side. I'd be surprised if this didn't in some cases spill over into male/female relationships."

Young men who are taught to be so aggressive and never take "no" for an answer may not understand the need for sensitivity towards another person, male or female. Sack says that someone trained to never accept "no" for an answer could apply that to social situations. If a woman says "no" to a man conditioned to never accept that word, they could both be in trouble.

"I don't want to lay this mainly on young athletes," Sack says. "Date rape is more universal in its scope. But it is a possibility that the socialization we give to young males through sports like football may lead to a tendency toward what might be perceived as rape. Certainly going a little further than they should go and not listening to someone when they say, 'No, no no! I don't want to do this!'

"If you went into a locker room," he says, "written all over the walls you'd see little things about what it takes to be a real man, disparaging women. When I was playing, if you were not doing well they called you 'pussy' for not hitting hard enough. If you got hit a little late and were not willing to go back and smash somebody in return you were called a 'sissy' a 'woman' or a 'girl.' That has been part of the game."

These are our culture's great motivational tools. And the reason they work is because we still hold up the idea of being violent and aggressive and dominant as the primary values for young males. We hold that to be passive and sensitive, intellectual and introspective is sissy and girlish. So if you take a young man who has been in that kind of environment and attack and accuse him of being less than aggressive, then he is less than a man, less than a human being. It will goad him.

"There was a coach who was sanctioned or reprimanded recently because before a football game in Texas he brought a cow or bull in and castrated it in front of the team," Sack says. "There's all kinds of symbolism there."

It's not like we Americans invented all this. The game seen as the most male-dominated in British society is rugby. The degradation of women is part and parcel of that. "To this day," Sack says, "if you go to a party after a rugby match, there are these lewd post-game singing and male-bonding rituals that they have that are sexually explicit and violent, humiliating and denigrating for women. I never felt football was quite that bad but football does have those kinds of tendencies I think. It is all male."





That's the bad news. The good news is that most of us respond to football because it reinforces our masculinity in healthy ways. It gives us a chance to revert to simpler times when the most important things in life were getting picked first to play football and being home in time for dinner. 

"It's rather interesting," Sabo says. "There is this idea that masculinity has become an imitation without an original. In other words, it's an illusion that doesn't have any base in reality any more, so for many men pursuing or worshipping the cultural icons of masculinity is akin to walking -- with great deliberation -- toward a mirage."

Dubious? According to Sabo, a sporting goods manufacturers association surveyed 20,000 American households in 1991 and found that women had become the leaders in the most popular fitness activities, including aerobic exercise, bicycling, calisthenics, exercise with equipment, walking, running and swimming.

Whereas men are much more publicly and culturally identified with sports and fitness, the reality is that they are less actively involved with fitness activities. And whereas women are more culturally associated and defined as physically passive and less athletically inclined, they are, in fact, more apt to participate in these activities than their male counterpart.

* * *

Men, like women, need connections with other people. We often search for connections that are consistent with our cultural identities. 

Sports tend to celebrate the kinds of ideologies that men grow up with and associate with masculinity. Football emphasizes and celebrates dominant forms of masculinity. It provides men with an activity around which we can relate to other men and in the process celebrate our own commitment to a dominant forms of masculinity.

Sports emerge in ways that reinforce the distribution of power and privilege in a society. Sports take resources in order to be organized and staged. The people who are most likely to have those resources are obviously privileged people within a culture. On a very general level, sports have emerged in ways that reflect the values and experiences of men because men have traditionally controlled resources. Sports, then, reflect the interest of particular groups of men: those with a disproportionate share of economic power.

"The whole notion of sports celebrating kind of a meritocracy as well as masculinity is something that is very important here," Coakley says. "People with power and privilege in this society are very interested in promoting the idea that we live in a meritocracy and that people who are successful got there because they deserve it."

Problems arise because men grow up surrounded and confronted by all these forms of competitive sports but don't raise any kinds of critical questions about them. We just accept them as part of our culture and nature. They're fun, they're entertaining. They're a turn-on. We like them best because we don't have to think much about them.

Football and hockey are seen as men's sports where you take a hit. Soaking up the physical agony of contact sports represents the ultimate in manliness. Playing with pain is encouraged, not chastened. In fact, fans get really obnoxious about players who won't take a hit.

"I remember when I was in college," Dr. Edward R. Hirt says, "Tony Dorsett was in his heyday and a lot of people ragged on him big time, saying he was such a pussy because he ran out of bounds and he would never take a hard hit. In reality, any of us would do the exact same thing. We don't want a 275-pound lineman crashing on us. And we certainly wouldn't want six of them to do it. You'd run out of bounds too, if you weren't going to gain any more than half a yard."

But for some reason football fans all get like that. We really admire the guys who go in a game, hit hard and swallow a hit. If our guys are victims of illegal or late hits, we bully them into fighting. Our guys, if they're real men, won't take any shit off your guys.

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

Chapter 21. She's No Woman, She's My Wife

by Bob Andelman

"Why do you bug me during football? Did I bother you during childbirth?"

Tim Taylor
TV Host, "Tool Time"
Detroit

Mothers. Daughters. Wives. Sisters. Women in-laws.

Perhaps the greatest unspoken reason that men love football is because it gives many of us a few precious, uninterrupted hours away from those wonderful women in our lives.

Football presents one of the last great places where men can hide out. It's a game that women are not going to start playing any time soon and that few women care to attend in person, so men can still be men and watch the games, hootin' and hollerin' and behaving like jerks. Like Three Stooges movies, women just don't get it.

"Has football gotten in the way of relationships? I'm sure it has," Barry Dreayer says. "Past relationships didn't have a clue what was going on, didn't want to to have a clue."

Love 'em, hate 'em, can or can't live without 'em, men feel that women often complicate their lives at all the wrong times. Twelve-forty-five on Sunday afternoon is not the time to ask the man in your life to get up and do anything. It is not the time to engage him in deep conversation about Junior's grades or suspicions that Muffy is a lesbian. And it is definitely not the time to complain that he hasn't been showing you enough attention lately. Because for the next 6 hours, it isn't going to get any better.

Some women threaten their husbands with divorce because they can't bear the thought of losing them to football one more week. Some women do more than threaten.

Retired Nabisco Brands sales management executive and Los Angeles Rams superfan Jim Runels decided two could play that game. He divorced his football-hating wife and married a woman who not only tolerates the game but loves it.

"My first wife? I had to sneak off by telling her I was going to play golf," Runels says. "Then I'd go see a football game. I'd come back late and she'd bitch and complain. She'd get mad at me. I'd never hear the end of it. I could never get her to go to a football game."

Runels' home office in Yorba Linda, California, is packed with all manner of Rams paraphernalia -- hats, phones, umbrellas, helmet telephones, directors chairs, pins, cards. "Plus I have jerseys -- Bob Waterfield's No. 7 with my name on the back!" he says. "My first wife, I could never get through the front door with this stuff. When I met my second wife, Marge, I made it clear I was a Rams fan. I sent her a Rams card and she sent me back a Rams magnet and a note that said, 'See? I'm a Rams fan, too!' We clicked."

The new Mr. & Mrs. Runels -- members of the Rambassadors fan club -- make annual sojourns to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl and have even been to the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

The day before he got married, Joe DiRaffaele, owner of Labor World, a Coconut Creek, Florida, chain of temporary help services, told his bride there were a few things about him that she needed to know.

"One day, I'm moving back to New York," he said. "And Saturdays, I watch football. And Sundays, I watch football. I don't go out."

She knew what she was getting into, DiRaffaele felt. "You know how things change when you got married and have kids? She had to understand."

Then, an amazing thing happened. One day, Kim turned to her husband and said, "You have to teach me about football." And she got into it. One Monday night, the Dolphins were playing the Jets and Joe set the VCR to tape the game while he was out. "But my wife watched it," he says. "When I got home she said, 'The Jets really got hosed.' " Joe decided right then and there that he was a lucky man, married to a rare woman.

Time passed and the DiRaffaeles' daughter was born, on a Saturday. Joe, of course, was watching college football at the time.



"Every time football is on, my daughter watches," DiRaffaele says. "She's 20 months old. I call 'Touchdown' and she does the referee's touchdown signal. She does clipping -- she bends and puts her hand behind her knee. When commercials come on, she walks away. I guess she likes the action of it. My wife has a black shirt with Joe Montana on it going back to pass. My daughter points to it and says, 'Football!' We're a football family."

Ralph Weisbeck's wife likes football, too, but she doesn't watch many games.

"She gets too excited," Weisbeck says, laughing. "She only comes in if we're three touchdowns ahead. She won't watch the game from the beginning; she's afraid they're going to lose. She can't stand losing."

Modern women discover a number of ways to cope with their men on NFL Sundays. They:

• Leave for a few hours.

• Stay, bitch and moan.

• Learn the game.

The rest of Why Men Love Football might be subtitled And The Women Who Want to Kill Them as we suggest possible responses for women struggling with man who plan to watch football come what may.

In the Berger household, Eric's love of football led to separate TVs and separate activities on Sunday. "My wife doesn't get into sports," he says, "but she tolerates it because she knows it's important to me. She knew how it was when we got married and it's not going to change."

Women often feel that football transforms their men into spectators in their own lives. They're probably right. But as one wife put it, "Football keeps him home. It's a hobby. My women friends say, 'Thank God he has something to keep him busy.' "

The same woman almost divorced her husband when he lost his job and filled his days as commissioner of a fantasy football league. They worked that out, but she became a staunch advocate of being anywhere but the living room when her husband pitches camp to watch football. She has no interest in the game. Rather than pouting and tapping her foot, waiting an eternity for the game to end, she'll go out with other disaffected women. Or she'll tackle paperwork brought home from the office.

Image via Wikipedia

Dr. Seppo E. Iso-Ahola says women should accept football as part of their man's behavior. "If you start arguing with that, especially if it's with somebody highly, psychologically invested in football, that is only going to lead to problems," he says. "It is much easier to accept that and say, 'Okay, my husband or boyfriend likes that and chose that and I accept that.' That doesn't cause problems."

"I think each person should have a parallel life," Dr. John M. Silva says. "If I'm going to sit at home all afternoon and watch TV, I shouldn't hold my wife prisoner and make her watch TV. If she wants to go out and tend the garden or go shopping, I think it's important for two things to go on. One, that the woman develops some appreciation for the interests of her spouse, and two, that they also have enough independence in their relationship that they can pursue some separate interests."

There's another good reason for women to flee on NFL Sundays. If they stay, men may expect to be waited on.

A lot of husbands want their wives nearby, even if they are not watching the game. They want them in the house to serve them, answer the phone, keep the kids quiet, get the beer and run to 7-Eleven for more when it runs out.

Hey, doll! We're out of pretzels! Are those nachos ready yet? How 'bout some beer!

"I can see the argument or displeasure with each other," Dr. Bruce C. Ogilvie says. "What can you tell women? Have a women's Sunday, doing things that please them. Leave the home scene because you are not going to change these apes. Do something that brings you pleasure. Be selfish. Go out and do something very, very selfish so you come home and feel totally good about what you have done."

Dr. Stanley H. Teitelbaum recommends that women construct more of a life of their own and develop independent interests so that while their man watches the game, they can do something besides family chores.

"There are couples who can do that," he says, "but there is also a risk, too, because the more people do that then the more they go their separate ways. After a while comes into play new questions: 'How much do they really need each other? How much do they really have with each other? Would they rather go separate ways and get involved in their separate activities and interests or do they really have shared interests and things in common? Do they really want to be together?' Going their own way is okay on Sunday if it's really important to him or on Saturday to watch the game. She can make that accommodation and do other things provided that there are enough other times in the course of their week that they have more mutuality, togetherness and harmony. In that scenario, the relationship probably can work."

Women can find themselves in a no-win predicament if their husbands and boyfriends don't take pains to understand the potential for conflict on Sundays. It doesn't speak well for the survival of these relationships if, to survive, a power game develops in which the husband/boyfriend is in control of the relationship and dictates, "This is what I want to do and this is what I like. Either fit in, go along with it or don't."

Every woman has her own way of dealing with separation anxiety on game day.

Chicago Bear Report managing editor Larry Mayer's second date with the woman he eventually married was at the Bears' 1987 season opener, a Monday night game versus the New York Giants. The Bears won the two previous Super Bowls and Mayer couldn't think of a more exciting place to be. His future bride didn't let on at the time than any place else would have been more exciting to her.

"My wife hates sports," Mayer says. "She was just being polite. She can't stand sports. She only travels on the road with me because the Bears play in good cities. In Tampa, she goes to the mall across the street from the stadium. In New Orleans, she brings a paperback to read in the stadium."




* * *
Railing about a toilet seat perpetually left up would probably prove less aggravating and more constructive than trying to talk a man out of watching football on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

"If a woman asks her husband to do things other than watch football, he won't find that acceptable. That can very easily lead to arguments," Iso-Ahola says. "In that context, I can see why violence would happen. These males are very highly invested, psychologically, in this game. Their tolerance level for other things is low. There is psychological data that has shown that when we watch or observe somebody else perform aggressively then our own behavior tends to become aggressive as well.

Therefore when these men are watching football -- an aggressive and violent sport -- their feeling of hostility in general tends to significantly increase. If you have an opportunity or situation at home that lends itself to arguments, then it is easier for the man who is already aggressively aroused, or in a hostile mood, to act."

The expression "football widow" refers to spouses of football fans who become invisible to their families from October to January. If yours is a busy family, working all week or busy with the kids, there is the expectation -- not unfairly -- that on Sunday you'll have some time together. But if the guy is more excited and interested in watching the game on TV than in having an outing with his family, he better expect trouble.

In that kind of stereotypical situation, a wife may feel aggrieved and neglected, that "This is our one day to really be together and go out, but you'd rather sit by the tube and watch football! You'd rather be married to football than me!" The husband retaliates: "Hey, I've worked hard and busted my butt all week. Finally, I have a chance to relax, drink a few beers and enjoy the game. But you won't give me space and the room to relax." He feels nagged and a mutual resentment builds.

One of the things that tends to help women a lot is trying to understand not only their own point of view but to get in the other person's shoes. One of the ways couples can do this is to switch roles. Stand back from being so hot under the collar and role-play with each other, assuming the other person's lines. Have a dialogue with the man expressing the views that he thinks the woman has and the woman expressing the views that she thinks the man has. If they can do that, they are in a position to better understand how the other one feels. Once there is greater appreciation for that, there is more of a foundation for negotiation.

Smart, experienced couples don't wait for NFL Sunday to arrive. They anticipate it before it happens, negotiate their needs ahead of time and trade off. "This Sunday, I'm going to watch the 49ers game and next Sunday we are going to do something else together." Or they'll structure Sunday so that at 4 p.m. she knows he is going to be watching the game. "I'm going to be watching the game but let's do something together in the morning and the afternoon before 4."

Dr. Michael Messner says discussion in social science circles about the viewing of violent sports revolves around whether it is something that helps men blow off steam or something that makes men more aggressive and prone to violence. Most of the evidence compiled by psychologists suggests the latter.

"Viewing aggressive and violent sports like boxing or football is more likely to de-sensitize men to violence and victims of violence," Messner says. "In terms of domestic violence, one of the things that is important to recognize is that when fans identify with teams, half of the fans are losing all the time. So if a man watches an aggressive, violent sport coupled with drinking some alcohol with his friends and his team loses, his aggression and frustration level both simultaneously go up. The tendency, once the game is over, to turn that aggression and frustration on someone close is what explains the fact that women's shelters always report much more activity and business on Super Bowl Sunday. In other parts of the world, during World Cup soccer, the same thing happens."

During the media hype leading up to Super Bowl XXVII in Pasadena, California in 1993, much was made of a report that Super Bowl Sunday is the busiest day of the year for women's shelters. An author of the report, Garland F. White, a sociologist at Old Dominion University, immediately claimed the report's findings were taken out of context. But many social scientists and psychologists nonetheless believe Super Bowl Sunday is a very dangerous day for women.

Some women want to learn about sports and get involved as much as possible themselves so as not to leave this as some sort of exclusive male territory. Other women do the exact opposite and on football Sundays they take shopping days with their women friends and get out.

"Rather than seeing this as something that women need to respond to," Messner says, "I think it's something that men need to think about and talk to each other about. Not necessarily that we should quit liking or watching sports together but I think we should try to understand the way it is connected to other parts of our lives. What it means to us in terms of our relationships to women. Does watching sports and the way we watch sports contribute to more supportive and intimate and peaceful relations with women? Or does it separate us more and make us more likely to be antagonistic and even violent towards women?

"Those are questions that men need to ask themselves," Messner says. "Until we do, women are going to be left trying to find ways to keep themselves safe rather than participating with us as equals."

A completely different school of thought suggests that women can never fully appreciate the game, no matter how hard they try. It's just not in their makeup.

Dr. William Beausay says that the large majority of women found at football games go there not to watch the game, but to accompany their companion. "I used to know the exact percentage of women who go because they love football -- it was about 8.6 percent," he says. Even that small number was made up of women who liked the sport for its pageantry, the atmosphere, the colors, the music and the spirit, Beausay says.

"They would never say the powerful team or an effective team, a great athletic prowess or winning. Those weren't the reasons. There were usually aesthetic reasons for women," he says.




So, according to his research, most women at football games are there because of their men. If the men didn't go, they wouldn't be found dead there.

"I don't think women are socialized in the same way as men," Dr. D. Stanley Eitzen says. "They are raised in the same type of society but they are raised to be feminine. To be feminine is to not be aggressive and not be dominant and they also don't play football. They haven't had that experience for the most part and, in fact, when it comes to football, they are on the sidelines being the supporters, cheering and all of that kind of thing while men are the doers. I think this represents a very sexist kind of society, but that is, in fact, what we are.

"Many women get into football and enjoy it, too" he says. "I don't think they have the same depth of feeling that men do because we have played it. We understand the intricacies of football and the precision that it takes to really have a play work well as well as the level of aggression. I don't know that women understand that because none of their sports in our society really are that way. They can be a little bit aggressive in field hockey and things like that but it is not the same."

Silva says he's intrigued by the way football coaches encourage their young men to develop aggression to be hitters, blockers and tacklers, giving rewards for the "best hit of the week." Best hits are bone-crushers, where the opponent who was tackled does not get up for a while. Players gets decal on their helmets for causing that.

"An ex-Denver Bronco told me that every Monday, some people had envelopes in their lockers with money in them," Silva says. "It was for extra hard hits. That's against league rules but it's just part of this macho thing. I said, don't you realize that if every team does that it increases the level of people getting hurt? He said, 'You don't think of it that way. You think of it on an individual basis and you are being rewarded.' Men have been socialized to understand this mentality; I'm not sure very many women do. In many ways women have been robbed because our work world is an aggressive, tough, rock 'em-sock 'em kind of place where men have the advantage of this kind of experience that women don't."

Men get really upset when their mates cannot identify with something that is as crucial to them as football.




"It is important if you can develop some appreciation and some knowledge for the sport," Silva says. "I don't care which way it goes, male/female, female/male. If the wife is interested in some sport, it behooves the husband to develop some interest and vice versa. Some games, I really do enjoy having my wife watch with me.

"I'll say, 'Do you know what happened right there? Do you know what that call was? Why did the team that recovered get to keep the ball?' " he explains. "Sometimes men watch and we know what is going on but our spouses don't. I find that the more I ask questions, the more knowledgeable my wife gets about the sport and the more knowledgeable she gets the more interested she is. One of the reasons a lot of women are not interested is they don't have a full understanding and appreciation. And when they ask a 'stupid' question, especially in front of your friends, they get ridiculed. What is that going to do?"

Some women gravitate to the game and meet with resistance if they get to liking it too much. They start watching it with their boyfriends, husbands or friends but find that men have a really hard time talking to them about it and taking it seriously.

"My sister told me that it took her husband's friends 10 years to accept the fact that she knew as much as they did about the Raiders," Messner says. "They did eventually learn to respect that she knows the game and she is very happy now that occasionally they will even ask for her opinion on something.

They didn't even know how to talk to a woman about those things. There is an assumption among men that women will not be interested, aren't interested and aren't knowledgeable."

That's been Larry Selvin's experience. Sort of. "Either women don't understand the rules or they don't know the players. If they know the rules and a few of the players, they're tolerable," he says.

"Actually, that goes for men or women."

Dan Jiggetts, the former Chicago Bears player turned sportscaster, enjoys talking football with women. "Most guys will seek out a woman that wants to watch a football game with them," he says. "They're very understanding. When you want to sit down and talk strategy, the women listen. They lock in. The guys say they understand, but the strategy goes over their heads. They're watching who gets knocked on their tail."

"My wife is a Cleveland Browns fan," Atlanta management consultant Mark von Dwingelo says. "When we watch games, she occasionally asks, 'Why'd that happen?' Or, 'Why'd they call that penalty?' I appreciate it. It's only annoying if the Browns are playing the Giants. If the Giants are on, she knows the game will only last three hours -- she can hold her questions. She'll say something to me and I'll say, 'Gretch, what am I doing?' And she'll say, 'Okay, I'll ask you later.'"

Copyright 1993 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!