The Superbowl, Team Sports and Me

The Superbowl is on.

(yawn)

I don't fit the gay stereotype in many ways but in this one way I do -- I find team sports boring. I haven't taken an active interest in the Superbowl since the late 1970s when in Jr. High School I bet (and lost) on the Denver Broncos. I don't know why I liked the broncos. I probably liked the color of their jerseys.

Last night at a party someone asked me who I was rooting for. I got a deer in the headlights look as I realized I didn't even know who was playing.

In the part of the country where I went to high school it was Basketball, not football, that was THE sport. This was in Southern Illinois and if you've seen the movie Hoosiers that's exactly the same mania for bball I encountered in the early 1980s. As someone who stood 6ft1 the most common question I got from adults was "you play basketball?" "No, I play in the band," I would murmur. (Ironically, the movie Hoosiers is one of my favorites).

This indifference to team sports would follow me into adulthood. Once, while waiting on a conference call for all the participants to dial in, some other guy remarked, "did you catch the tournament last night?" The night before I had just watched the men's long program competition for figure skating. I started to exclaim, "Yeah, and did you see Brian Boitano's triple salchow toe loop combination?" When someone else cut me off and I realized they were talking about the NBA.

In high school, I was leader of the pep band. During a football game, I had the band start playing during a snap or a first in ten or some mumbo jumbo like that...and we got a technical foul. Because of me. Monday morning I was summoned to the principal's office to face the head coach, the principal and the team's quarterback (Ron Taylor, whose hairy pecs floated in my mind and distracted me from sleep on days we had gym class together). They tried to explain to me what had happened and why the band can't play during a "snap." The three of them tried to get me to understand...but eventually they gave up in comical frustration.

The one time I caught football fervor was in Jacksonville, Fl. Shortly after Jax got the Jaguars it looked like the team might go all the way to the Superbowl and football fever was epidemic and I caught it. Well, not enough to watch the games but to keep up with what was happening.

And I learned a little secret.

In locker rooms all my life I've heard the guys discussing this play or that play after a big game and their sports insight banter seemed so fluid and knowledgeable while my ignorance infinite. I could never keep up with it. Until I watched the postgame show after one of the Jaguars' games. The next day, at the Y, the sports banter parroted what had been said on the post game. "Yeah, they expected to play an offensive game but we kept them on the defense" I heard myself say as my towel-clad locker room fraternity nodded in agreement with my sage insight, which we had all heard on the postgame the night before.

So, I'm not watching the game tonight. The great commercials I can catch on YouTube. But I'll be ready for the locker room tomorrow. I'm watching the postgame commentary.